Having joined Athletic Bilbao's youth ranks at 11, he started playing professionally with its reserves in the Segunda División, and made his first-team debut on 2 September 1990 in a 1–0 away loss against Tenerife,[3] finishing his first year in La Liga with 18 games.
[4][5] After the emergence of Asier del Horno (another Lezama youth graduate) in the 2002–03 campaign, Larrazábal still featured prominently in his last two seasons – 36 matches, three goals – but eventually retired from the game in May 2004 at the age of 33, after a two-decade link with a sole club.
[6] Larrazábal subsequently became a coach: after starting in amateur football, he joined lowly Lemona (Basque Country) from Segunda División B in 2009, leading the side to the sixth position in his first year and narrowly missing out on play-off qualification.
After a second season in Lemoa in which the team reached the final of the Copa Federación de España,[7] he returned to Athletic Bilbao to take up a position as sporting director, following the election of former teammate Josu Urrutia as president in July 2011.
[12] In April 2016, Larrazábal became manager of third-tier Marbella for a short spell,[13] and although they only collected two points from his three games in charge, it was enough to successfully steer them away from the relegation zone by the end of the campaign.