AFC Bournemouth and United States national team midfielder Tyler Adams said he’ll miss manager Andoni Iraola when he departs at the end of the Premier League season.
Iraola, 43, will be out of contract at season-end. With two matches remaining, Bournemouth have an outside shot at qualification for the Champions League, though the Cherries have a tough assignment on Tuesday when they face title-chasers Manchester City.
For those reasons, Adams is savoring the days where he still gets to work with the Spaniard.
“I’ll miss him a ton. I mean, he’s a great guy, a great person,” Adams told ESPN as he partnered with Nike on a mini-pitch rededication in his hometown of Poughkeepsie, New York.
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“Football aside, just the conversations that we have and how he’s helped me as a player and a person.”
Adams added that he felt early on that there was alignment with Iraola when the two joined the club in the summer of 2023.
“I knew from the first moment that I spoke to him when I was switching clubs and coming here that his ideas fit the way that I wanted to play,” Adams said.
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“I didn’t think that it was going to translate this well, and I was going to play such an important role in the way that we do things. So yeah, he’s an incredible manager. He’s going to coach big teams whenever he wants to take that next step or where he’s going to go. It will be interesting, but he’s amazing. He’s really changed the direction of the club and taken it to new heights.”
USMNT manager Mauricio Pochettino is set to announce his World Cup roster next week in New York, but Adams insisted that he and his international teammates are doing what they can to focus on finishing the season strong.
“I think everyone’s so focused on proving their point that they deserve to be in the roster,” he said. “The guys in MLS are focusing on putting in good performances and you see the guys putting in great performances. The guys in Europe just trying to finish the season in a really strong position, whether they have something to achieve with their club or not and prove a point because there’s not much time left obviously before to really change any perspective on what the roster’s going to be.”
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That said, Adams said he can’t help but think at least a little bit about the World Cup.
“My mind doesn’t really drift there, but I feel like you have to handle more things in preparation for it just in terms of if you’re in the squad, in terms of where people are staying, flights, when is family coming out, all these kinds of things that you end up dealing with something about the World Cup every single day, whether you want to or not,” he said.
“Just sorting all the stuff out behind the scenes, I think it brings me to think about it more than I’d like to.”
