Paris FC's English head coach Liam Rosenior looks on ahead of the French L1 football match between Paris FC and AS Monaco at Stade Jean-Bouin
Photo by FRANCK FIFE / AFP via Getty Images
Liam Rosenior’s time at Chelsea came to an abrupt end in April after just four months in charge. The former Strasbourg manager was appointed as Enzo Maresca’s successor in January and actually made a promising start.
Rosenior won six of his first seven matches with the Blues, but results quickly deteriorated, with just four wins in the next 16 games. Five consecutive Premier League defeats without scoring a single goal proved to be the final straw, convincing the board to show him the exit door.
The 42-year-old has since returned to France as the head coach of Paris FC, where he has also made an encouraging start. Rosenior has now opened up about his turbulent Chelsea tenure and revealed the biggest lesson he took from his experience in West London.
READ MORE:Eyes on the prize! Xabi Alonso and Chelsea newcomer in line for Premier League awards
Liam Rosenior explains the biggest lesson he learned from his Chelsea tenure
In the November edition of French football magazine So Foot, Liam Rosenior described his four-month spell at Chelsea as both the best and hardest experience of his life. The Paris FC boss hinted that his struggles at Stamford Bridge were about far more than what happened on the pitch.
“It was the best experience of my life, and the hardest too. It was fantastic, even though it only lasted four months,” Rosenior began. “I don’t want to go into details now; I’ll talk about it one day, when the time is right. But in a country where tolerance is an important value, what happened there has nothing to do with football.”
How confident are you that Chelsea can get the better of Sunderland? ⚽
Score prediction?
Score?
Would you be confident in Lavia & Henderson to get the job done?
Rosenior then gave a defiant response when asked about how media scrutiny intensified despite Chelsea’s promising start. He pointed to the ridicule surrounding his handwritten instructions to Alejandro Garnacho during the Blues’ Champions League Round of 16 second leg against Paris Saint-Germain.
He continued: “I know, I answered without answering it. Actually, the moment that worried me the most was at the beginning, when we went through that five-game winning streak. Any club would have been happy with such a run, but not Chelsea. You get good results and you’re in the spotlight.
“Then, there was a kind of snowball effect in the media. They made fun of those instructions I gave Garnacho on a scrap of paper when we were down to 10 men against PSG. The clothes I wore became a joke, the way I spoke too. I’m not a joke!”
Rosenior also reflected on the biggest lesson he learned during his time at Chelsea. He now realises the media’s major influence on how a manager and their team are perceived. Despite criticism of his communication style, the Englishman insisted that he had always tried to be “sincere and authentic.”
“In England, there’s this preconceived notion of what a Premier League coach should be, how he should behave,” Rosenior added. “You have to conform to that standard. People who know me know that I’m someone who tries to be sincere and authentic.
“But I don’t have control over how the media describes me or talks about me. What I’ve understood now, and this is important for all coaches worldwide, is that social media, or the media in general, can dictate public opinion about the quality of a player or a coach.
“This isn’t new, of course, but the biggest lesson from my time at Chelsea is knowing that they are also capable of constructing the entire narrative around a club’s trajectory.”