The assistant who got away

There is a curious subplot to tonight's Champions League fixture at Anfield, and Andoni Iraola has been happy to share it. The Liverpool manager has revealed that the man in the opposite dugout, Villarreal boss Inigo Perez, might very well have been standing beside him on the touchline tonight rather than against him, had the paperwork gone a different way.

Pérez and Iraola go back a long way. The two are fellow Basques who shared a dressing room at Athletic Bilbao for five years between 2009 and 2014, and Perez went on to serve as Iraola's assistant at Rayo Vallecano during the 2022-23 season. When Iraola made the move to Bournemouth in 2023, he wanted Perez alongside him. The authorities had other ideas. A work permit application failed, with the panel ruling that Perez did not yet have enough experience as an assistant to qualify for a role in the Premier League.

Iraola went to bat for his friend

Iraola did not accept the decision quietly. Asked by Amazon Prime Video whether Perez would be at Liverpool with him now if things had worked out differently, the manager was unequivocal: "Yes, I certainly think so. At Bournemouth, he didn't have the required experience or the required number of years as an assistant to prove he was good enough to work here in the Premier League."

He went further, describing the effort he put in to make the case: "I remember there was a panel, too. I remember making videos, calling a lot of famous players and trying to convince the panel that he was good enough to be the assistant, but sadly, it didn't work. But that happens in football. When you are good, you are good, and he's now coaching in the Champions League, so he's certainly proved he was good enough, not just to be an assistant but to coach here."

Instead, Iraola worked with Tommy Elphick and Shaun Cooper at Bournemouth, and both subsequently followed him to Liverpool when he took charge of the Reds in the summer.

What tonight's match means beyond the result

For Iraola, this is clearly more than just another Champions League fixture. At 38, Perez is six years his junior and very much cut from the same cloth. The Liverpool manager sees a reflection of his own journey into coaching when he looks across at his former team-mate, noting: "He has always understood the game well. Players like him and me weren't big athletes, so we had to do everything well on the pitch and make all the right decisions. This is the starting point for a lot of coaches, and in this case, I think it's quite similar."

Liverpool head into the match having won both of their Champions League fixtures this season, and are clear favourites to extend that record against Villarreal. But friendships in football have a habit of making things complicated, and Iraola will know better than anyone that Perez is a man with a point to prove. Whether that gives Villarreal an edge or simply makes for a more personal evening at Anfield remains to be seen.