Rayo Vallecano coach Inigo Perez is in full flow as he explains how he wants football to be played.
“Our idea is to win the ball back as soon as possible, and then to attack very quickly,” Perez tells The Athletic at his La Liga club’s modest training ground in suburban Madrid, “for the opposition never to get comfortable on the pitch. That’s what I like at Rayo — high pressing, direct play, dynamic positions, structures, a kind of ordered chaos to create chances and score goals.”
This idea that ‘pressing is the best playmaker’ helped Perez lead Rayo into Europe for the first time in 25 years in his first full season as a manager last term. It is something he learned playing under managers such as Marcelo Bielsa and Ernesto Valverde at Athletic Club, where his team-mates included current Bournemouth head coach Andoni Iraola.
Perez says that most of the top managers in European club football also now want to play this way — including Hansi Flick at reigning La Liga champions Barcelona, Arne Slot at their Premier League counterparts Liverpool, Vincent Kompany at German Bundesliga title holders Bayern Munich and Luis Enrique at last season’s Champions League winners Paris Saint-Germain.
The 37-year-old also sees similarities to the tactical approach Xabi Alonso is instilling after taking the Real Madrid job this summer.
“When Inigo Perez’s Rayo or Andoni Iraola’s Bournemouth create 10 chances with their pressing, maybe they score one,” he says. “If Alonso or Flick can convince their players to expend energy pressing high, and they win the ball back seven times, they will score two or three. They do not need a No 10. Any mistake by the opposition, and bang.
“Football has changed, and now that the best teams are doing it, everyone will want to.”
Pamplona-born Perez entered Athletic Club’s youth system aged 12, moving up through the ranks to make a La Liga debut in October 2009. Iraola was also on the pitch that day, and both were members of the Bielsa-coached side that reached the Europa League and Copa del Rey finals in 2011-12.
A cultured midfielder or left-back, Perez later played for Mallorca, Numancia and hometown club Osasuna. When his contract with the latter ended in June 2022, he was still just 34 and had offers to play on elsewhere, but instead agreed to become Iraola’s assistant at Rayo.
“The change was not a big shock as I had been preparing for many years,” he says. “Andoni knew that too — we were close friends. Coaching is my passion. I enjoy life much more as a coach than as a player.”
The ensuing 2022-23 season saw Rayo beat both Barca and Madrid when Spain’s big two came to their crumbling Estadio Vallecas. When Bournemouth hired Iraola the following summer, Perez was invited to replace him but chose instead to accompany his pal to the Premier League.
Perez had coaching qualifications from the Spanish FA, but not the specific UEFA badge required by the UK government to grant him a work permit. A Home Office appeals panel eventually denied him permission to be formally employed by Bournemouth.
“The Premier League was a dream for me, a really exciting challenge,” Perez says now, half smiling, half grimacing.
Iraola’s Bournemouth and Perez’s Rayo played a pre-season friendly in 2024 (Robin Jones – AFC Bournemouth/AFC Bournemouth via Getty Images)
“During my time there, I had to accept that I could not wear a (Bournemouth) club tracksuit, or go to any public events. Apart from that, I just did my job as assistant coach, from Monday to Saturday, at the training ground. As I try not to have an ego, I almost preferred it.
“I had to accept the situation — the country had its rules. There are no grudges or bad feelings.”
Rayo began 2023-24 well under Iraola’s successor Francisco Rodriguez but then started to falter. In the February, he was sacked, and this time Perez said yes to the top job at Vallecas.
Perez smiles when The Athletic refers to Rayo as the most “peculiar” club in La Liga.
Training ground facilities are relatively basic compared to those of other Spanish top-flight clubs. Their 14,700-capacity stadium has plenty of old-school charm but badly needs modernisation. This week’s UEFA Conference League visitors, Lech Poznan of Poland, complained on social media about the poor standard of the away dressing room.
Szybki tour po naszej szatni 👀 pic.twitter.com/AbS0tQqRCG
— Lech Poznań (@LechPoznan) November 5, 2025
“There are two very important things about Rayo Vallecano,” Perez says. “Structurally and logistically, we need to improve. But because of the lack of structure, the coach is involved in decisions across many different areas and departments. If you can accept that, and not lose energy thinking about the things that could be improved, Rayo is maybe the best club in La Liga to develop as a coach. I could not find these particular conditions anywhere else.”
After Perez’s appointment, Rayo eked out enough points over the final three months of the season to just about avoid relegation. Then last term, they matched the club’s highest-ever La Liga finish of eighth to secure European football in this one. Key to getting the team playing the way he wanted was making them understand what they were being asked to do, Perez says.
“It’s important that you can explain it clearly: on the blackboard, in your speech, in a video,” he says. “Then, (you must) design training exercises which quickly get that idea across. You need the players to understand what you want them to do. Repetition is very important, too. When they see that it’s working — that you’ve scored a goal, won a game — that’s when they accept it and it becomes natural to them.”
Perez does not break down training into physical and tactical work, instead designing complex exercises so players build fitness while practising real-game situations.
“It could be 11 v 11, seven v seven, or with numerical superiority on one side, or in reduced spaces,” he says. “But it’s important for each exercise to be very dynamic with a very high (physical) load and lots of tactical density. It’s a game for the players, but you have added a lot of tactical information along the way. Exercises must also flow, they don’t need me to keep stopping and intervening.”
Rayo are 11th in La Liga, with Real Madrid to come at home on Sunday (Dennis Agyeman/Europa Press via Getty Images)
Perez’s Rayo do a lot of work preparing for each team they face — with specific training drills based around how that particular side play; for example, how they build up from the back.
“To play against Real Madrid, you need new exercises,” he says. “To play Barca, more new exercises. In each case, there is different information for the players to understand. You must also think of what Rayo Vallecano’s players need, so they can keep improving. Each exercise must include many different aspects, so you must spend time designing them.”
While collective structure and movements are really important for Perez’s teams, his players must actively think about each decision on the pitch, not just robotically follow instructions from the coaching staff.
“When I was a player, I was always told, ‘Don’t think so much, just act’,” he says. “But players must think, must understand why I’m telling him to do this, why we play in a certain way. When they learn to do both things, to think and act, everything comes much easier, without having to force things.”
Rayo’s 2024-25 salary limit is just over €47million (£41.3m; $54.4m), fifth-lowest in La Liga and dwarfed by Madrid’s €761m and Barcelona’s €351m. Yet under Iraola, and now Perez, they have regularly matched the biggest sides in the division, such as in August’s 1-1 La Liga draw with the champions at Vallecas.
The connection between the players and the club’s super-loyal fans from the district which gives the stadium its name is also crucial, says Perez, who received an award on the pitch from the grateful ‘Bukaneros’ ultras group after August’s 5-0 aggregate defeat of Neman Grodno from Belarus in the play-off round secured qualification for the Conference League proper.
“Rayo’s players know that the fans will unconditionally support them and help them,” Perez says. “The fans give them everything, so the players give everything. Both sides feed each other. This is a working-class neighbourhood. That’s my background too (in Pamplona). The connection between the players and the fans is very, very powerful. My job as coach is to maintain it and make it even stronger.”
A banner at Rayo vs Lech Poznan on Thursday (Guille Martinez/f22photo/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
Vallecas was rocking again on Thursday as Rayo came from two goals down at half-time to beat Poznan 3-2 and make it seven points from the first three of their six league-phase matches in the Conference League, putting them sixth in the 36-team table. Despite spending just €7million on new players over the summer ahead of the extra demands of European competition, Rayo have maintained last season’s good form in La Liga and sit mid-table (11th, but a point off eighth) before hosting first-placed Madrid on Sunday.
Perez has been studying how the Bernabeu giants’ new-look team set up differently from last year’s version under Carlo Ancelotti.
“Maybe it was easier to press Ancelotti’s Madrid than Alonso’s Madrid, but it depends what each coach wants,” he says. “Some (coaches) are not as concerned with building from the back to generate numerical superiorities and attack spaces. With Xabi, everything is more thought-through. (But) Carlo is as good a tactician as he is a man-manager.
“Coaching Madrid is difficult. Over time, we’ll see Xabi’s ideas more clearly in his team.”
At the start of last season, new manager Flick quickly convinced Barcelona’s stars to adopt the intense pressing and high defensive line that would go on to help them win a domestic treble and reach the Champions League semi-finals. Barca are finding life more difficult this term, though. As well as dropping points at Rayo in August, they lost the recent Clasico 2-1 in Madrid, and drew 3-3 away against Belgium’s Club Brugge in their most recent Champions League game on Wednesday.
“What last year’s Barca gained from the high line, pushing the team forward, was a lot more than what it cost them,” Perez says. “And last season, nobody expected it from them. Now, we’ve all had a year of analysing them and adapting. It’s Hansi’s job to come up with a solution to what we’ve done. With all the analysis now possible, all coaches need to keep adapting.”
Perez has also been watching Ruben Amorim’s struggles to get his ‘idea’ across to the squad at Manchester United since his appointment a year ago, and says he sympathises with the Portuguese coach’s refusal to compromise on how he wants them to play.
Perez is a vocal presence on the sidelines at Rayo (Alberto Gardin/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
“I don’t believe that the coach has to adapt more to the players (than vice-versa),” Perez says. “I am 100 per cent sure that it’s more difficult at Manchester United or Real Madrid than at Rayo Vallecano or Bournemouth. To convince players who have won a Champions League, or a World Cup, is more difficult. Not because they have a big ego, but because they are used to the very top coaches.
“When there’s not much time (on the training pitch due to the fixture congestion often faced by the top sides juggling domestic and European football), your exercises must be better, so the players pick up your ideas more quickly. No coach can completely change their style of play overnight. Although maybe if someday, hopefully, I’m at an elite team, I’ll have to adapt more.”
Perez’s current contract runs until the end of the season, and he answers carefully when asked if it is true he was considered by Nottingham Forest when they were looking for a head coach in recent weeks.
“Rayo had success last season, so it’s normal for there to be those types of options,” Perez says.
“I always try to stay very humble, don’t let myself think too far ahead. I’m very happy at Vallecas, and I’m developing as a coach and as a person. But I’m very ambitious.
“When June comes, we’ll see what happens.”