Xavi Valero departs Liverpool after just one year, leaving Iraola short-handed before pre-season

Andoni Iraola begins his Liverpool tenure with an immediate vacancy to fill after head goalkeeping coach Xavi Valero departed the club, just 12 months after rejoining from West Ham United. Pre-season training starts next week, leaving the new manager to work with an interim arrangement from the outset.

According to The Athletic, Valero’s exit is entirely unrelated to Arne Slot’s dismissal in May and the parting has been described as fully amicable. Goalkeeper development and pathway lead Colin Stewart, who joined Liverpool last year following a nine-year stint at Rangers, will step in to cover the role until a permanent successor is appointed. Stewart will work directly with the club’s goalkeeping group, which includes Alisson, Giorgi Mamardashvili, Freddie Woodman and Armin Pecsi.

This was Valero’s second spell at Anfield. The experienced Spaniard first served under Rafael Benítez between 2007 and 2010, before following him to Inter Milan, Chelsea, Napoli and Real Madrid. He then spent seven years at West Ham before returning to Liverpool last summer.

Iraola does arrive with familiar faces around him. Tommy Elphick and Shaun Cooper join as first-team coaches, while Pablo de la Torre takes the role of assistant coach and Tom Webber comes in as tactical analyst. The departures of Sipke Hulshoff, Giovanni van Bronckhorst, Ruben Peeters and Roderick van der Ham — all of whom left with Slot — mean the backroom staff has been substantially reshaped.

The context for the overhaul is a difficult 2025-26 campaign under Slot, in which Liverpool failed to defend the Premier League title they had won the previous season. A fifth-place finish secured Champions League football for next season, but it was deemed insufficient and Slot was relieved of his duties. Iraola, who guided Bournemouth to a creditable sixth-place finish, was appointed as his replacement in a move that surprised much of the football world.

“Really excited, really excited,” Iraola said of the challenge ahead. “Because obviously you know about Liverpool, you know that it’s a big club, a massive club, one of the biggest in the world.”

With pre-season imminent and the goalkeeping coach search ongoing, Iraola’s first weeks in the job will test his ability to manage uncertainty at the top of his staff structure before a ball has been kicked.