By Opta Analyst | Created at 2025-01-31 19:05:07 | Updated at 2025-01-31 22:56:18
3 hours ago
Andoni Iraola and Iñigo Pérez once shared the same bench, but now the latter is making a name for himself as the manager of Rayo Vallecano.
Over the course of the next decade, we might look back to 2025 as the year football changed completely.
Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City have shown a vulnerability that has in equal parts excited and bewildered analysts this season. Guardiola, so far, hasn’t found the solution to arrest the symptoms even if he does partly understand the cause.
“Today, modern football is the way Bournemouth play, the way Newcastle, Brighton, Liverpool play. Modern football is not positional, you have the rise the rhythm,” Guardiola said recently in an interview with TNT Sports.
While Andoni Iraola is the principal candidate to fill the vacuum that the apostles of positional play will eventually leave, Iñigo Pérez is rising the rhythm and heartbeats of fans in Vallecas.
As Iraola’s former assistant at Rayo Vallecano, Pérez wanted to keep working with the current Bournemouth boss but couldn’t obtain the necessary visa to work in the United Kingdom. He has been forced to forge his own path but he has chosen not to stray too far from Iraola’s manifesto.
“We have shared many years together in professional football,” said Pérez of his relationship with Iraola when he was announced as Rayo’s new manager in February 2024.
“I won’t try to fool anyone. The idea is similar and that’s why we worked together… it doesn’t make me feel uncomfortable. I’m not afraid of the comparison.”
Pérez, the former Athletic Club midfielder, has Rayo Vallecano sitting seventh and playing a form of bully-ball that excites fans and scares Spain’s biggest teams. The manifesto might be Iraola’s, but its central tenets are straight from the bible of Marcelo Bielsa.
The line from El Loco Bielsa straight to Pérez is easy to draw.
When Iñaki Arechabaleta stood for election as president of Athletic Bilbao in 2022, the manager he said he would re-appoint if he won was Bielsa. The assistant Bielsa had lined up? Iñigo Pérez. The latter had played under the Argentinian during his career as a cerebral central midfielder. Iraola was also there at the time, soaking up the lessons that would eventually become the basis of his own philosophies.
The idea is simple: it is a vertical game with high pressure, trying to win the ball back close to the opposition’s goal. Shoot early and often, and try to get the ball into the penalty area fast.
Iraola deployed that style at Rayo, which is where Bournemouth saw and fell in love with his approach. He managed the club through a golden era in which they beat Barcelona (three times), Real Madrid and Athletic, and made it to the semi-finals of the Copa del Rey.
It’s a similar story with Pérez on the bench. Although they’re seventh in the table, it’s their performances against the bigger teams that will draw comparisons to Iraola and might pique interest from clubs outside Vallecas.
Pérez is unbeaten in his two games against Real Madrid as Rayo’s manager (two draws). They have also drawn with Atlético Madrid this season, and they can throw in a couple of victories over Girona and Real Sociedad while picking up points against Real Betis and Villarreal. These are teams with Champions League aspirations; Rayo, on the other hand, are concerned only with avoiding relegation even if current form suggests they are European hopefuls.
And he has done this with a limited squad.
Rayo have the oldest average starting XI through 21 games this season (29 years, 83 days). It’s almost a year older, on average, than the second-oldest team, Leganés.
They don’t have a single superstar in their team.
The only moves that have caught the eye in recent transfer windows are more vanity signings by the club’s owner than useful, long-term additions. And while seventh might sound modest, such proximity to the European places is the land of make-believe for Rayo.
Pérez’s Blueprint for Success
“I like that my team’s characteristics are to go out and take risks, and from there, maintain a sense of order,” as Pérez says. “There are tactical nuances we talk about so that it’s not complete chaos.”
This is very much in line with how Iraola sees the game, too.
“If you are brave, they have to play a game that is not their preferred game. We try to find these scenarios, especially against big teams because they are used to absolute control and the patterns they want,” Iraola told the Independent last week.
Against Girona, the team with the third-highest percentage of possession in La Liga this season behind Real Madrid and Barcelona, Rayo had 57.1% of the ball last weekend. They also had 10 high turnovers, as Michel’s side never got settled. It was the most uncomfortable Girona have looked in La Liga in some time.
Likewise, against Atlético Madrid in September, Rayo had 54.8% possession and won the ball back eight times in the final third as they played out a draw. Things got trickier against Real Madrid in terms of possession (34%) but they constantly asked questions of Madrid’s build-up and took an unimaginable two-goal lead in the first half. And the lack of possession proves the point: they don’t eschew possession but they don’t need the ball either.
They have taken the lead now against all four of the teams currently in the Champions League places in La Liga – Barcelona, Real Madrid, Atlético and Athletic. That might say more about their inability to hold on to a lead having won none of those games, but it also shows they are not reactive. They very much do take risks and make their opponents uncomfortable.
Playing at Vallecas is always a challenge for visiting teams. The field is tight and there’s a certain pinball-like quality to proceedings. It’s the venue that has seen the fourth-fewest build-up attacks in La Liga this season (28), where a build-up attack is defined as the number of open play sequences that contain 10+ passes and end in a shot or a touch in the box.
Playing Rayo is a frantic affair.
To better understand what Pérez requires, we can look at the underwhelming spell of James Rodríguez. The Colombian has left the club after playing a total of 204 minutes in all competitions for Rayo.
James has spoken since his move to León in Liga MX and took aim at Pérez. But he was also drawing the contours of what modern football has come to increasingly look like.
“There are still clubs who use a ’10’ but football has changed a lot,” James told Fox Deportes. “They put so much emphasis on the physical side now. The number 10 is being lost. I think there are still intelligent managers who can play with a ’10’ and when you have someone with talent, it is much easier to create chances and you can win that way too.”
Pérez plays a number 10, but not in the way James sees the position, prioritising the physical over pure talent. But that’s the nature of managing Rayo Vallecano. If you were to rely on pure talent and the transfer market, you’d soon find yourself leading an unsustainable project with no remedy or recourse.
And Rayo do create chances, even if they’re not perfectly crafted. They take 12.5 shots per 90 this season, the seventh most in La Liga. Their xG per shot of 0.09 is better only than Getafe’s, and they have taken 111 shots from outside the box this season, 42% of their attempts, which is the fifth-greatest proportion in the league.
The graphic below shows it hasn’t been the most fruitful of strategies, but that’s not the point. The point is to hit teams fast and create that sense of organised chaos.
Isi Palazón also caught a stray or two during James’ mild rant. He is very talented but couldn’t be further from what James is as a number 10. He signed from Ponferradina in 2020 and has played 148 times for the club. He works tirelessly and has no problem helping out on the wings when necessary.
You can see the shape they play in based on their average positions against Girona.
This is textbook Pérez. Isi drifts in off the right, which is where their most dangerous players play. It’s a system that cannot tolerate a number 10 whose only priority is to create.
No Brakes
James also made a point about having nothing but pure speed out wide. Pérez has equipped his team with lightning-quick players in the full-back positions and on the wings. They are extremely direct and might not top the charts in technical ability, but Pérez is willing to forgo the latter for an abundance of the former.
One player who deserves special mention is Andrei Rațiu. He starts as a right-back and often moves into an inverted full-back position when Rayo have settled possession, but he also underlaps to give Jorge de Frutos a yard of space and break the cover of the defence.
“I sometimes value much more a player carrying the ball and forcing things to happen,” Iraola explained during his interview with the Independent. “I think when you play too positional – one, two touches to find a free man – you sometimes lose the initiative from the players to just take their man on and attack the spaces.”
Iraola might as well be explaining Ratiu’s role at Rayo. He is the ultimate attacker of spaces. He is one of the fastest players in La Liga and has had several top Premier League clubs watching him recently, including Monchi from Aston Villa. He’s recorded 31 carries (moving at least five metres with the ball) followed by a take-on this season, first among all right-backs and 11 more than second on that list. Six of his carries have resulted in a shot, which is also first among that same group of players.
Andrei Rațiu has 31 carries with a take-on this season.The Technical Trade-Off
If, as Guardiola says, the future of football is to raise the rhythm, and that Iraola and – by extension – Pérez are at the vanguard of this brave new world, then losing some technical ability for the capacity to close down spaces faster and win more duels is a necessary trade-off.
For example, Sergio Camello is one of the hardest-working strikers in the world but has only scored three goals in 18 La Liga games this season. In fact, Rayo’s top scorer is De Frutos with four. Camello has seen off the challenges of players like Raúl de Tomás and James for minutes because of his work off the ball.
The team they started with against Girona is what might be considered Rayo’s gala eleven. A team with no superstars but pure speed, sprinkled with technical ability.
Even the players who lack physical mass make up for it in willingness and game intelligence. Take Unai López, for example, probably the most technically capable player on the team. He is a major proponent of Pérez’s ‘risk first, order second’ principle of play. And he is often paired with a complete destroyer like Óscar Valentín or Pathé Ciss to compensate for the lack of physicality.
In the screenshot below, we see how Camello angles his run to close off Girona goalkeeper Paulo Gazzaniga’s options. López then makes the read to push up and completely squeeze Girona’s attempts to play out. This resulted in a recovery high up the field.
He is the vital cog in Pérez’s pressing system. He pushes up to join the attacking three and Palazón, while Ciss man-marks. It takes sensational effort and concentration to pull this off against teams whose modus operandi it is to play through a high press, teams that might soon start to realise they simply can’t compete against the chaotic new order.
Iraola is being touted as the next superstar manager, but one big question is how this style will apply at bigger teams. Is more order and less chaos a better formula when you clearly have talent on your side?
We’ll find out in the coming years as Iraola continues to blaze the trail and the likes of Pérez follow.
For now, they’re on the outside looking in. But the current crop of superstar coaches are looking over their shoulder.
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