Chelsea were humiliated by Paris Saint-Germain over two legs in the Champions League last 16 and head coach Liam Rosenior has learned a few brutal lessons about his squad
07:00, 18 Mar 2026
Liam Rosenior
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Liam Rosenior during Chelsea's humiliating defeat to Paris Saint-Germain(Image: Darren Walsh/Chelsea FC)
With 59 minutes on the clock, Chelsea may as well have stopped playing. Paris Saint-Germain, too.
Liam Rosenior essentially waved the white flag when he took three of his star players off in Joao Pedro, Cole Palmer and Enzo Fernandez, with the Blues needing five goals. It was an admission of defeat, while also being the smart thing to do given the minutes those three have played recently. The last thing he needed was another injury.
The tie was no longer any of Chelsea's business. It was at the start, for all of six minutes before Mamadou Sarr made a costly error leading to Khvicha Kvaratskhelia opening the scoring on the night and putting the Parisians four goals ahead on aggregate. Tie over.
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I'm not sure what Chelsea did to annoy Kvaratskhelia. The Georgian was incredible in both legs. The tie-winner if you were to pick one.
PSG had those sorts of players scattered all over the pitch. Bradley Barcola, too, was exceptional in both matches. The midfield three were fantastic. Oh, and Ballon d'Or winner Ousmane Dembele.
It was a reality check for Chelsea. Last summer, they humiliated PSG in New Jersey but the Blues were given a taste of their own medicine this time around. Chelsea poked the bear and got a reaction.
The unavoidable truth for Rosenior is that too many of his players cannot be relied upon on the biggest stage. The two legs against PSG proved just that. Too many individual errors let Chelsea down and of course the head coach has to take a large part of the blame, too, given he is the man to set his players up.
There is no doubt that these players, all so young, can get there in time but that time is not right now. They got an extremely difficult draw, granted, with the European champions but maybe it will prove to be a necessary reality check for the club. That will be the hope for supporters, anyway.
Rosenior took risks in both legs. Part of being a manager, or a head coach, is to take risks but both of them felt a bit unnecessary. Mamadou Sarr looked out of his depth at times in a sort of hybrid role where he would play as a right-back and a right-sided centre-back. The first goal came from a sloppy, schoolboy mistake from the Senegal international and it was no surprise to see him hooked at the halfway point.
Rosenior thought playing Sarr on Tuesday night, with an injury to Reece James and Malo Gusto feeling under the weather, would be the way to go, particularly with the former Strasbourg defender's experience of playing against the French champions. However, it was a decision that came back to bite the Chelsea head coach.
It was a similar tale in the first leg when Rosenior chose Filip Jorgensen as his goalkeeper and the Dane gifted PSG their third goal - the most important, arguably, of the whole tie - and should have also done better for their fifth of the night at Parc des Princes.
Rosenior is learning as a coach. He himself admits that. Unfortunately for Rosenior, it becomes brutal when it is on the world's biggest stage.
What now? Chelsea have a huge Premier League game on Saturday evening away at Everton. It will be the Blues' first experience of the Hill Dickinson Stadium but going away to the Toffees is never easy.
Those reporting to Cobham today will be down - and so they should be given the nature of the defeat in a massive match. But it is up to Rosenior and his staff to pick them up again. Chelsea cannot afford to feel sorry for themselves, they need to secure Champions League football again.
When asked what he will do to ensure the last week does not have a negative impact on the rest of the season, Rosenior replied: "That's my job. How I go about that is how we always go about it.
"We need to be resilient. We need to make sure we go to Everton with an organisation, with a freshness and intensity in our team because we want to be in this competition next season.
"If we perform how I know we can, we can get there without the individual mistakes that we're making at the moment."
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How he cuts those individual errors out of his squad, well that seems like a really tough challenge. And he does not have long to figure it out with the trip to Merseyside in just over 72 hours.