Andoni Iraola's Liverpool Tour: Insights and Challenges

By the time Liverpool left Chicago, Andoni Iraola had his first defeat, a 4-2 loss to Leeds, and a far clearer view of what he has – and what he very obviously doesn’t.

The Basque coach’s opening pre-season in charge brought wins over Sunderland in Nashville and Wrexham in New York before the tour ended with that chaotic night at Soldier Field. Across three games, Liverpool looked at times like a side ready to run through the Premier League. At others, they resembled a team still stuck between eras.

Iraola’s ideas are clear – the team isn’t yet

The first half against Leeds was the closest thing yet to a glimpse of Iraola’s Liverpool. Aggressive, front-foot, hunting in packs, big names snapping into challenges and driving play forward. For 45 minutes, the structure held and the intensity bit.

Then the changes came, and the old problems walked straight back through the door.

Set-piece frailty. Switches off in concentration. The sort of soft concessions that scarred last season. Leeds punished them, and Iraola watched a strong platform unravel into a 4-2 defeat that felt more revealing than the two wins that preceded it.

This is still the start. Remarkably, Iraola has not yet even met Virgil van Dijk, Cody Gakpo, Alisson, Alexis Mac Allister or new signing Víctor Muñoz on the training pitch. All of them are due back at the AXA Training Centre on Wednesday after extended breaks, with Mac Allister granted further time off after his World Cup exertions.

Liverpool open their Premier League campaign at Newcastle in less than three weeks. Between now and then lie only two more friendlies – a double-header against Como at Anfield – to knit together a new style, reintroduce the senior core and hope the fitness issues ease.

“I would like to say on the first day we are going to be perfect, everyone will be in place,” Iraola admitted. “But probably it is not going to be like this.” The tour underlined exactly why.

A coach ahead of the squad – and the squad behind the market

For most of the trip, Iraola worked without 14 first‑team players: eight on post-World Cup holidays, six injured. Joe Gomez joined the casualty list in the US, a fresh reminder of why relying on him as a constant presence is a risk rather than a plan.

Even if all of them had been available, the gaps would still glare.

Mohamed Salah’s departure was announced in March, with talks to end his contract a year early starting even earlier. Five months on, Liverpool have not replaced the most reliable goalscorer and right-sided presence of the era. The right flank, once defined by certainty, now looks like a problem to be solved on the fly.

Conor Bradley’s serious knee injury strips depth from right-back and pushes a fragile structure closer to breaking point. There is genuine excitement around Jérémy Jacquet and Giovanni Leoni – the latter has visibly filled out into a powerful, imposing figure during his rehabilitation from an anterior cruciate ligament injury – and 18-year-olds Ifeanyi Ndukwe and Mor Talla Ndiaye impressed in the US. They brought energy, bravery and no little composure.

But they do not bring Premier League experience. And in Ndukwe’s case, he will not bring anything at all this season; post-Brexit work permit rules mean he cannot play.

Central defence remains thin. Given Gomez’s history, he has to be considered a bonus when available rather than one of four reliable options. Iraola spoke intriguingly about his preference for wingers who can operate on both flanks and the tactical value of switching them mid-game, but even if Liverpool succeed in prising Bradley Barcola from Paris Saint-Germain, the right side feels light on proven, top-level solutions.

The coach is clear about what he wants. The squad, and the market work behind it, still need to catch up.

Nyoni steps out of the shadows

One upside of the absentees: opportunity. Iraola leaned heavily on young players across the tour and came away impressed by how many rose to the level.

Ndukwe and Talla Ndiaye, Lewis Koumas, Kieran Morrison, Luke Chambers – all made their cases. None, though, advanced their first-team prospects as emphatically as Nyoni.

The 19-year-old spent last season as a permanent part of Arne Slot’s squad, along with Rio Ngumoha. While Ngumoha managed 19 Premier League appearances, including five starts, Nyoni’s league involvement was limited to six substitute outings. He felt like a player hovering on the edge of things.

Not any more.

In the US, Nyoni grew with every minute. He looked immediately at home with Iraola’s demand that his midfielders find forward options quickly, whether under pressure or after carving out a pocket of space with clever movement. He received the ball on the half-turn, punched passes between lines and refused to hide.

His pass in the buildup to Florian Wirtz’s goal against Leeds was the standout moment – a perfectly weighted, incisive ball that sliced through the defensive shape and matched the ambition of Iraola’s system. It was not an outlier. It was in keeping with his entire contribution.

Nyoni had said after the Leeds game that he knew he had to improve this summer. On this tour, he backed up the words with performances that will be hard to ignore once the competitive games start.

Jones drifts as others step forward

While Nyoni surged, Curtis Jones stalled.

The 25-year-old, entering the final year of his Liverpool contract amid growing interest from Italian champions Inter, struggled to find his place in Iraola’s framework. Where Nyoni and Dominik Szoboszlai embraced the vertical, urgent demands on central midfielders, Jones looked less comfortable, particularly in the second half against Leeds when the game became stretched and Liverpool’s control slipped.

His most damaging moment, though, came off the ball.

Against Wrexham, Jones reacted petulantly to not receiving the captain’s armband from Szoboszlai, a flash of irritation that cut against the collective ethos Iraola has been at pains to stress. The armband had already bypassed him once on tour when Gomez went off against Sunderland, going instead to Kostas Tsimikas – a reserve left-back who spent last season on loan at Roma.

For a boyhood Liverpool supporter and one of the more senior figures on this trip, the snub was always going to sting. Jones, Szoboszlai and Tsimikas all worked hard in the days after the Wrexham game to play down the incident and laugh it off, and the social media noise around it probably inflated its importance.

Yet the image lingered. Iraola spoke in Chicago about the primacy of the group, about sacrifice and shared responsibility. Against that backdrop, Jones’s reaction jarred. At a time when roles are being defined and futures assessed, he did little to tighten his grip on a place in the next version of Liverpool.

Szoboszlai takes centre stage

If Jones looked peripheral, Szoboszlai moved in the opposite direction.

With Salah, Andy Robertson, Van Dijk and Alisson all absent, last season’s standout performer became the face and voice of this Liverpool tour. In Nashville, New York and Chicago, the Hungary captain drew the loudest roars. Every appearance, every touch, every shot was greeted with a noise that underlined his new status.

The cameras followed him. So did the microphones. More importantly for Iraola, so did the younger players.

Szoboszlai set the standard in training, driving sessions with intensity and focus. In a squad short on senior outfield leaders, his presence carried weight. Fresh from signing a new five-year contract, the 25-year-old now looks an obvious candidate to fill one of the vice-captain roles vacated by Salah and Robertson.

On and off the pitch, he behaved like a player ready to take ownership of Liverpool’s next phase rather than simply ride it.

Three games in the US will not define Iraola’s reign, but they did strip away any illusions. The ideas are bold, the energy is real, and the young talent is pushing hard. The holes, though, are impossible to ignore.

Liverpool have a coach who knows exactly how he wants his team to play. The question, with Newcastle looming and the transfer window ticking down, is whether the club will give him a squad capable of playing it.