The principle of the agreement that Imanol Idiakez will be the new coach of Deportivo

Deportivo is one step away from finally closing the circle on hiring a new coach. Imanol Idiakez He will be the coach of the blue and white team next season. The Basque (San Sebastián, 1972) is the older brother of Íñigo, a striker who played for a decade in the First League with Real Sociedad, Oviedo and Rayo. The club and the coach reached an agreement in principle and agreed on the terms of its establishment and the main guidelines of the project of the team’s return to the second league this season.

The Basque coach was sacked in Leganes in April, in Segunda, where he arrived after serving as assistant Unai Emery in Villarreal, which won the Europa League in 2021 and moved on to the next campaign. He previously led Zaragoza ten games at the start of the 2018-2019 season, just as Natxo González closed his stage at La Romareda to finish at A Coruña, and when AEK Larnaca Cyprus, where they won the 2018 Cup.

His debut as a coach in Second B dates back to the 2008-2009 season. and he was bitter because he was relegated to the Real Sociedad affiliate, which then had a generation that featured Javi Ros (who had just faced Dépora as a Badajoz player and Majadahonda), Illarramendi, Borja Viguera, Zurutuza and Agirretxe. Later, Sports Center Ejido, Guijuelo and Real Unión de Irún arrived for Idiakez, but the best experiences come from Toledo and Lleida. In both, he was on the verge of promotion.

in promotion

In the 2013-2014 campaign. he joined a Toledo team that had just been promoted from the Third Division and led them to the promotion stage to the Second Division, but was eliminated in the quarter-finals of the qualifying round against Lleida. Something was connected with the former football player of this same Catalan club, who would later sign him for the next two seasons. At the end of the first in Lérida, he finished in fifth place, two points from the promotion stage. In the next one, after the fourth place, they reached the final due to the jump in the category, but they fell in stoppage time against Sevilla Atlético, in which the former athlete Carlos Fernández already stood out.

“My sensitivity to the game is certainly closer to Guardiola, trying to defend the ball and through that create chances, but it also depends on where you go and the players you have. You can’t be a Taliban. You have to adapt to what you have to get an effect,” he told Noticias de Gipuzkoa in 2018 shortly before joining Zaragoza.

So, Idiakez teams boast of good ball handling. In La Romareda too, the high pressing and touch play of the defense was not a subject of negotiation, but the results did not follow it. Eleven points in ten games, with only two wins, forged the worst start to the season for the Maño team in the Second League and ultimately sentenced the Basque coach to dismissal.

From the 4-3-3 or 4-2-3-1, the system that Dépor repeated the most in the last two seasons, Lleida, which he was supposed to lead to the elite, really combined this taste for touch with defensive composure. That team kept an empty net in 25 out of 38 league games which nearly took them to Second Place. In this same aspect, he also tightened the nuts in Leganés, where he directed former athlete Gaku Shibasaki’s latest campaign. After a terrible start to the championship in Segunda, during which in two of the first eight days he did nothing more than pass, he then connected eleven without defeat in the best streak of the Madrid team in the elite.

For this improvement, he did not hesitate to reverse his initial approaches: he protected himself defensively with three centre-backs, set up two full-backs who acted as wings and, without neglecting the possession game, insisted on the need to contest above all else. . In January, it rose to seventh place, just a breath of progress. And he stayed there until the terrible month of March, when he five consecutive defeats (including against Racing de Santander and Ibiza, with whom he struggled for durability) led to his dismissaland its replacement eight days after completion by a branch technician.

Before I hang up my boots

As a footballer, Imanol Idiakez never reached the performance of his brother Íñigo. He was a clever striker, scoring 33 goals in eight seasons with Real Sociedad in the First Division, and another 9 later in the Second Division with Oviedo and Ray, before making the jump to English football. He also made the jump to the bench, and his debut as a head coach happened just three years ago in Cultural Leonesa. The most recent experience dates back to the second Mexican category, where he led Cancun.

Imanol was a generational partner of Aranzábal, De Pedro, goalkeepers Alberto and Yuber, Pikabee, Jon Baker (brother of former Barcelona player José Mario), Unai Emery… Without being able to make the leap that others made towards the elite. , the new coach of Dépor began his career as a footballer outside of San Sebastián with Beasain, Avilés, Burgos, Linares, Girona and Reus, among others. His only experience in the elite comes from promotion to Segunda with Ciudad de Murcia, where he was coached by Juanma Lillo. “He is the coach I had who knows the most about the game, the one who taught me the most, with whom I learned the most. I didn’t spend much time with him, but he opened up a new way of understanding training and the game. They were very good months,” he admitted in an interview in which he said Guardiola came to train with them after his time at Calcio.

technical staff

In his recent tenure at Leganés, Imanol Idiakez had an extensive coaching staff. His usual assistant Mario Gibanel was joined by Ander Murillo as assistant coach, physical coach Juan Piñero and ex-footballer Juanjo Valencia as goalkeeping coach. Murillo and Valencia were members of Athletic Bilbao. Gibanel has followed Imanol Idiakez since his stage in Lleida, and together they managed AEK Larnaca and Zaragoza. Gibanel, from Huesca, played football for Levante, Terrasa and Ciudad de Murcia. Interestingly, he also served as an assistant to Íñigo Idiakez, Imanolo’s brother, during his time at Cultural Leonesa.