Bournemouth have confirmed Marco Rose will be their new head coach from next season. Will the German carry on the good work of the outgoing Andoni Iraola, though?
When Bournemouth decided to replace Gary O’Neil with Andoni Iraola in 2023, eyebrows were raised. O’Neil had done a decent job in difficult circumstances, while his replacement had impressed with Rayo Vallecano but was an unknown quantity outside of Spain.
However, Iraola has done a superb job on the south coast in his almost three years there, securing Bournemouth’s two highest points totals in the Premier League, while they already have their joint-second most points in a top-flight season in 2025-26 with five games to go (48).
Iraola only has weeks remaining at the Vitality Stadium, though, having recently announced that he will depart the club at the end of the campaign.
The Cherries have wasted no time in planning for the future, announcing on Monday that Marco Rose will be the new head coach from the start of next season.
To make the announcement so soon points to how well-run Bournemouth are as a club, but is it an appointment that makes sense?
This is a different scenario to when Iraola came in, as that was on Bournemouth’s terms. The club may rather keep their popular boss, but forced to find a successor, on paper, they appear to have made a sensible choice.
Despite some ups and downs, Rose remains one of the most highly-regarded head coaches in German football, and in his early years, was compared to Jürgen Klopp and Thomas Tuchel.
They weren’t just lazy comparisons with high-profile German managers, either. Rose played under Klopp and Tuchel at Mainz, and his approach to football borrows from both, with sprinkles of influence from Ralf Rangnick, whom he worked under at Red Bull Salzburg.
Rose has also been credited with being an excellent communicator, with officials at Borussia Mönchengladbach claiming they wanted to go out and play for him after hearing some of his early team talks.
After winning the UEFA Youth League with Salzburg, Rose became senior head coach at the club, lifting two Austrian Bundesliga titles and an Austrian Cup.
That earned him a move to Mönchengladbach, and he had the German Bundesliga side challenging for the title in the first half of the 2019-20 campaign, ultimately earning a respectable top-four finish and sealing UEFA Champions League qualification. The Foals made a good go of it in Europe’s premier competition in 2020-21 as well, finishing above Inter in their group, only to bow out to Manchester City in the last 16.
Borussia Dortmund came calling, securing Rose’s services ahead of the 2021-22 campaign, but despite a second-place finish in the league, BVB parted ways with him after just one season. While they were Bayern Munich’s closest challengers in the title race, they struggled in cup competitions. Dortmund crashed out of the DFB-Pokal to second-tier St. Pauli, and after going out of the Champions League in the group stage, were eliminated from the Europa League by Rangers.
Rose wasn’t out of work for long, though, and he was welcomed back into the Red Bull family when his hometown club, RB Leipzig, came calling in September 2022 to replace Domenico Tedesco.
He had a solid first campaign, winning the DFB-Pokal and finishing third in the Bundesliga. A fourth-place finish followed in 2023-24, but after a good start in his next season, things unravelled somewhat.
Leipzig won six and drew two of their first eight league games in 2024-25, before a loss at Borussia Dortmund began a run of just four wins from their next 17 (D7 L6). That included two humbling 5-1 defeats at home to Wolfsburg and away to Bayern.
Their poor performance in the Champions League also didn’t help, with Die Roten losing seven of their eight league-phase games (W1), finishing in 32nd place out of 36 teams and going out.
It was a bitter coincidence that Rose was sacked after losing to Mönchengladbach in March 2025.
After more than a year out of management, though, the 49-year-old is ready to step back into the hot seat, heading to the Premier League for the first time.
But what can Bournemouth fans expect?
They have seen plenty of high pressing, fast breaks and vertical football under Iraola, and in short, they can broadly expect similar under Rose.
Speaking to The Guardian in February 2021, when asked to describe the blueprint for one of his teams, Rose said: “[My team is] always active in a game, against the ball and with the ball. It tries to win balls in a high position on the pitch. If we have the chance to score quickly, we should use it; if not, we should keep possession but not so that we start to sleep.
“Moving the ball fast, moving the opponents, winning it back in the shortest possible time if we lose it. Playing clever, playing hard, not just for the gallery. Always convinced about every teammate, and always with the belief that we have a chance to win against anyone.”
Of course, that was over five years ago, so he may have changed his stance since then, but if we had told you those quotes came from Iraola instead of Rose, you’d probably believe us.
In his first season at Mönchengladbach, only Bayern Munich recorded more shot-ending (69) and goal-ending (12) high turnovers than the Foals (50 and 7), while only Bayer Leverkusen (84) made more direct attacks than Gladbach (77).
They won the third-most games and had the third-best defence that season, and also had the third-best xG (72.7), only just behind RB Leipzig (73.0).
Gladbach weren’t quite as effective in transition the following season; only sixth for shot-ending high turnovers (43) and only scoring once from such situations. They finished eighth but were at least more effective overall in attack: only three teams scored more than their 64 goals.
At Dortmund in 2021-22, five Bundesliga teams recorded more high turnovers than Rose’s team (295), while their PPDA (passes per defensive action) of 11.4 was the joint-third lowest behind FC Köln (9.2) and Bayern (9.5). While there were signs of his preference for high pressing, it wasn’t exactly an overriding theme of their play.
Dortmund did hugely overperform their xG for that season, scoring 85 goals from just 65.7 xG. Of teams in the top five European leagues, only Lazio overperformed by more (77 goals from 56 xG). Dortmund’s shot conversion rate of 18.8% was the best of any team in Europe’s top five leagues in 2021-22.
It may have just been good fortune for Rose to have such lethal finishers, or it could be that his coaching brought the best out of his forwards. Their xG per shot of 0.15 was the joint-highest in the Bundesliga, so they were often getting into good shooting positions. Having 11 penalties – the most in the league – will have helped, though.
That has been a bit of a theme for Rose. In 2019-20, his Gladbach side also averaged 0.15 xG per shot, the joint-most in the Bundesliga, while in 2022-23, Leipzig’s 0.13 was also the joint-most, while they averaged the same the following season, when only Bayern (0.14) had more.
Rose felt like a good fit for Leipzig, especially being his hometown club. He was back in the Red Bull setup, and he had them pressing high in his first campaign. In the 2022-23 Bundesliga season, they made the third-most high turnovers (298), and the second-most shot-ending high turnovers (46) and direct attacks (77) behind only Bayern, who were also the only team with a lower PPDA than Rose’s men (11.0).
Leipzig were only eighth in the Bundesliga for high turnovers (252) in 2023-24, though, and had the fifth-lowest PPDA (12.8).
Rose has noticeably altered his style over time. Not having quite the resources at Mönchengladbach as he did in later jobs may have been why he settled for his team averaging around 52% possession. In his sole season at Dortmund, that shot up to 59.4%, the second-most in the league.
His Leipzig team also had the second-most possession in 2022-23 (58.3%), but that went down to 55.4% the following season (fifth-most), and prior to his sacking in March 2025, Leipzig only averaged 52.3% possession (fifth-most) last season.
Bournemouth are averaging 50.1% possession in the Premier League this season, which is more than in both the 2023-24 (43.1%) and 2024-25 (48.6%) campaigns. It will be interesting to see if Rose tries to have more control with his new team, or if he’ll lean into a ‘less is more’ approach.
During his time as Leipzig boss, no team scored as many as their 22 goals from fast breaks in the Bundesliga. Bournemouth have scored seven goals from fast breaks in the Premier League this season; only Man City and Brentford (both nine) have more, so Rose will have the players to launch rapid attacks at his new club.
As you can see from the style comparison map below, by the end, Rose seemed to be trying to get Leipzig to play similarly to his team from his first season at Mönchengladbach back in 2019-20.
You can also see how Rose’s previous teams compare to Iraola’s Bournemouth. Each season for the latter has seen the Cherries average fewer passes per sequence, so their new boss is not quite as direct as their outgoing gaffer. Having said that, in the last few seasons, Rose was getting Leipzig to play faster, while Iraola’s Bournemouth have slowed their average direct speed upfield since last season.
Perhaps Rose might change in a different league. It would be naïve to think an experienced coach like him would just use the same blueprint as before and not look to adapt in new surroundings.
While Bournemouth have chosen a successor who shares a lot of the same basic principles, there are also enough differences to potentially evolve the team further. After all, Iraola wasn’t exactly a carbon copy of his predecessors and look what he’s been able to achieve at the club.
When talking to The Guardian in 2021, Rose said of his career aspirations: “I never sit at home and think: ‘In 10 years I want to be coach of Man Utd or Liverpool.’ Of course, if I have time to think about it, maybe it’s interesting to be a coach once in the Premier League.”
It only took five years, and Bournemouth will be the destination, rather than Old Trafford or Anfield.
Is Marco Rose an ‘Iraola’ by any other name, and if so, will he smell as sweet? Only time will tell.
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