Editor’s note: This is an updated version of an article which first appeared on The Athletic in February 2025.At the aptly-named Vitality stadium, 48 hours before Bournemouth’s game against Wolves in the Premier League, Andoni Iraola was smiling, laughing and talking about the importance of creativity and animation, chemistry and happiness, in football and beyond.“I don’t have complaints,” he said. “I think we have a very good changing room, a healthy one. It’s something that will give you a lot of points at the end of the season. When problems come, you know the people you want next to you. I’ve no complaints. Happiness brings points.”It is an unexpected twist in the conversation, because Iraola then nods to the book on the desk in front of him and said: “This is very unhappy — a dangerous route.“But I liked the book.”The book in question is Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. Iraola mentioned it to TNT Sports’ deaf language programme Sign Up before this interview. Not only has Iraola read the novel — a long time ago, he says — but, after becoming manager of Bournemouth, he visited Shelley’s grave.Something known locally, if not so much nationally, is that Shelley is buried in the middle of Bournemouth.“I read it when I was, like, 19, 20 years old,” Iraola said. “I remember the process, because I started by reading Dracula by Bram Stoker and I really enjoyed that one. It was a different book, written differently — in (the form of) letters — one envelope, then another. I really enjoyed it, and from there I thought: ‘OK, now I go to Frankenstein, it could be something similar.’“But now, when I remember, Frankenstein by Mary Shelley is completely different. It’s nothing to do with Dracula. But I also enjoyed it.“The connection with Bournemouth, I didn’t know until I came here. One day, just out walking with my wife, I think she told me: ‘I’ve read Mary Shelley’s grave is around here’. And it is in the middle of town. You can go there and see it. It’s nice to see, it doesn’t look like something special, but I think it is part of the history here. I liked the experience.”Mary Shelley’s grave at St Peter’s church in Bournemouth (Michael Walker/The Athletic)Iraola confirmed the outside impression of an uncommonly cerebral football man with a hinterland. He was studying Law when moving into the professional game as an Athletic Club player over two decades ago. He says reading has always been part of his life, including his football career.“I started reading quite early and I remember all my football life — I was a professional from 20 — I used my travels by bus, plane, always with a book,” Iraola said. “It was not part of my preparation, but it helped me forget what was happening around me for one hour, two hours.“What I get (from literature) is some distraction from football. When you start reading a book you are thinking about other things, you don’t think of football. It’s like going for a walk or riding a bike.“Normally when I read, I read one book that is about detectives, quite easy, noir; and then I try to read one book that is more difficult intellectually, that requires more attention from yourself. It’s the way I’ve done it.”Shelley was 20 when writing Frankenstein in the early 19th century, which Iraola agreed is mind-blowing when one considers the anguished and futuristic subject matter. It was published in 1818 and has never been out of print. She is buried in Bournemouth due to her son Percy — who lived in nearby Boscombe — moving her remains, and those of her distinguished parents Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin, from London. This paragraph hardly does her extraordinary life justice.“The generations before ours, I think they were much more mature at the same age,” Iraola said. “We sometimes want to be eternal kids, continuing our studies until we are almost 30. Life was different when she lived. You had to wake up earlier. I think it’s amazing she can write this book at 20.”Iraola was not painting himself as football’s intellectual — he was responding to questions — and is quick to get back to football. But occasionally he returned to the novel in front of him and said he still sees “two, three players with books” on Bournemouth away trips, even though “nowadays we’re all on the phone, still reading but in a different way”.He sat with the initials ‘AI’ on his tracksuit top, and if ever there was an early entry into the world of artificial intelligence, it is the unnamed ‘monster’ summoned by Shelley’s Victor Frankenstein. “In a fit of enthusiastic madness, I created a rational creature,” Frankenstein declares at one point.