Farm managers? How Chelsea hired Rosenior could change soccer

Chelsea have a new head coach … again.

Liam Rosenior has taken charge at Stamford Bridge following the sudden departure of Enzo Maresca on New Year’s Day, becoming the Blues’ sixth manager of the BlueCo (a consortium including Clearlake Capital and Todd Boehly) era, and the fifth permanent appointment the group has made since it took over in May 2022.

But this isn’t the same old story. Like a Major League Baseball team, Chelsea have effectively appointed from within, turning to the manager of their partner club, Strasbourg, in Ligue 1. While we’re used to seeing this kind of pathway taken by players to gain them minutes on loan and learn the system, managers following suit takes the relationship to another level.

It’s rarer than you would think — and it pretty much never happens at the elite level.

Pathways are common for players … but not for managers

There are now over 100 multi-club organizations (MCOs) in football, at least 23 of which link three or more clubs together. Some even look like mini-empires — for example, City Football Group’s portfolio of 12 clubs that spans five continents, with Manchester City at the top of the organization.

Players moving through set pathways, between partner clubs, has become an increasingly common sight. The Red Bull group perfected this art over a decade ago, moving players up the chain through FC Liefering (in Austria’s second tier), to RB Salzburg (in Austria’s first tier), to RB Leipzig in the German Bundesliga, and then on to an elite club for a transfer profit. Some of the top players in Europe right now, like Liverpool’s Dominik Szoboszlai and Bayern Munich’s Dayot Upamecano, completed this pathway.

Chelsea to Strasbourg is now among football’s most well-trodden paths. Three current Blues players — Mike Penders, Kendry Páez and Mamadou Sarr — are on loan with the Ligue 1 side, while three others — Ben Chilwell, Diego Moreira and Mathis Amougou — joined permanently. Brazil midfielder Andrey Santos spent last season on loan at Strasbourg, and will now reunite with Rosenior at Chelsea. In a reverse move, 22-year-old Netherlands striker Emmanuel Emegha will join Chelsea in the summer.

But managers moving through these chains are much rarer. The only MCO that has really achieved this is Red Bull, who have successfully promoted Marco Rose, Matthias Jaissle and, most notably, Jesse Marsch, through their system.

Examples elsewhere are sparse. Patrick Vieira managed Manchester City’s youth team then moved onto New York City FC under the CFG umbrella; Daniel Stendel managed Barnsley, then later moved to sister club Nancy under the Pacific Media Group in France; and Nigel Pearson took the reins with King Power International-owned OH Leuven in Belgium shortly after departing from Leicester City.

The clubs at the top of Europe’s major leagues had not yet used this strategy for their own manager — until now.

‘Boehly interviewed everyone I know at Red Bull’

ESPN spoke to Marsch (now managing the Canada men’s national team), who is the quintessential example of a coach forged by a multi-club organization, having progressed from the New York Red Bulls, to FC Salzburg and then to RB Leipzig over the course of six years. The former United States international stressed that while a good multi-club organization aligns playing styles and develops player pathways, it can and should do more.

“The first thing I would say is when Todd Boehly bought the club [Chelsea], he must have interviewed just about every person I know in Red Bull about either coming to the club or what Red Bull’s processes were in developing a multi-club model. So he clearly had that on his mind from the beginning,” he said. “It’s not just about playing style. It’s about developing young players, coaches, scouts, physical therapists, sports scientists, video analysts, assistant coaches.

“This is what I think a club identity should be about. One of the most important elements is developing the coaches, because they are the ones in charge of implementing the playing style.”

By recruiting players and overseeing their development through multiple clubs, you develop an intense knowledge of them, and the same logic applies to staff. Marsch says it removes some of the critical unknowns you run into during a standard managerial hiring process.

“One of the things with managers is you don’t always know how they manage stress and how they take on responsibility in difficult situations,” he says. “But now you already have a built-in understanding as to who they are. How do they deal with certain elements of their job? How do they treat people around them? Those things are almost more important than how they coach.

Marsch, who managed Leeds United between 2022 and 2023, argues that the level of intensity in the Premier League is beyond anything else you can find in football. “The stresses, the focus and the attention from the media, from the fans … I think if I were a sporting director, that would be one of the things that would make me feel secure: knowing how my particular coach would handle those kinds of stresses.”

A glimpse into football’s dark future?

Rosenior’s move to Chelsea opens up important questions in the near future, the first of which is how feasible it is to successfully run such a multi-club system. In his view, Marsch warns that it’s incredibly hard.

“There’s so many inefficiencies in football. The hire and fire system that is created at most clubs, the inability to have a long-term plan, the inability to align a club to its academy … just doing it within one club, let alone doing it in a multi club system!

“This is football, it’s people; emotion dictates decisions more than rationale and strategy.”

Red Bull have clearly made a success of it, and Boehly has mined that organization for hints and tips on how to recreate the model. BlueCo has moved quickly to install former Wolves boss Gary O’Neil as his replacement at Strasbourg, which means he’s now seen as a potential candidate for Chelsea down the line. CFG, which includes Man City, has opened up pathways at the lower levels for managers and allowed them to coach on different continents, but with Pep Guardiola holding the top job in that chain for close to a decade, there’s been no obvious move to ready a replacement using this method.

Instead, City seem much more likely to call upon one of Pep’s former assistants when the time comes. Pep Lijnders (formerly under Klopp at Liverpool) is currently in that job and was recently labelled a “genius” by Guardiola; Maresca has reportedly held discussions over that role, and is now a free agent; Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta graduated under Guardiola’s tutelage; while Bayern boss Vincent Kompany was key defender and captain for Guardiola on the pitch.

Then there’s Manchester United, who are the crowning jewel in INEOS’ multi-club portfolio that includes Lausanne in Switzerland and OGC Nice in France. Having just sacked Ruben Amorim — the first coach their hierarchy genuinely chose — perhaps it could serve them very well to start using the other clubs under the control of Sir Jim Ratcliffe as proving grounds, which would help prevent nasty surprises.

But is the absence of success stories in this area (Red Bull aside) telling?

Another question is whether what’s good for one club in the relationship is also good for the other. It must be noted that Strasbourg fans are outraged by Rosenior’s move to Stamford Bridge, with the supporters federation labelling it “another humiliating step in Racing’s subservience to Chelsea.”

They’re hardly the first set of fans to feel like they’re being trampled over by MCOs and big business – even the Red Bull model has drawn ire from some quarters — and adding a managerial food chain to the player pathways already established will only heighten the issue for many.