Strasbourg manager Liam Rosenior has confirmed a verbal agreement to replace Enzo Maresca as Chelsea manager and has formally said goodbye to the French club. After initial public caution over his future, Rosenior travelled to London for negotiations with Chelsea and returned to Strasbourg once talks concluded positively.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn that moment, on Saturday night, I didn\u2019t know what was going to happen,\u201d he told a Strasbourg press conference on Tuesday morning. \u201cWhat\u2019s happened since is I was given permission to speak to, for me\u2014actually, not for me, it\u2019s the truth\u2014one of the biggest football clubs in the world , who are Club World Cup champions. It\u2019s an honour for me to be associated with a club like that.<\/p>\n
\u201cNow, on this day, it looks like I\u2019m going to be the next manager of that football club.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rosenior described his time at Strasbourg as the \u201cbest 18 months\u201d of his career and underlined his affection for the club while asking fans to appreciate the difference in size between the two BlueCo-owned sides. \u201cIt\u2019s not just Chelsea. I\u2019ve had interest from many clubs, Champions League clubs, which I\u2019ve always been open and honest with Mark [Keller, club president]. I\u2019ve always been open and honest with our ownership,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
He added: \u201cBut there are certain moments in your life that you have a decision to make that you can\u2019t say no to. This opportunity, for me, is something that I cannot turn down at this moment in my life for many reasons.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s an unbelievable opportunity at an unbelievable club who are Club World Cup champions, with an incredible squad and incredible fan base. Secondly, it means I can go home and see my kids. I\u2019m away from my children, I\u2019ve missed them and I\u2019m going to make the sacrifice of not seeing them worth it with the success that we have here.\u201d<\/p>\n
Having returned to Strasbourg to show respect and offer a personal farewell, the former Hull City and Derby County manager said the administrative formalities remain. \u201cI haven\u2019t signed yet,\u201d he noted. \u201cI\u2019ve agreed verbally with Chelsea. Everything is agreed, it will probably go through in the next few hours.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo excited about the future. I cannot lie, my whole life I\u2019ve worked to be a coach. Now, to be presented this opportunity to manage a world class football club is something I\u2019ve always dreamed of.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m getting on a plane after this. Hopefully all of the paperwork will be signed and I can meet my new squad, which I\u2019m really looking forward to do.\u201d<\/p>\n
Chelsea face Fulham at Craven Cottage on Wednesday, with interim boss Calum McFarlane expected to remain in charge for that fixture.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Liam Rosenior confirms a verbal agreement to become Chelsea manager and returns to Strasbourg. today<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5762,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[190,1163],"tags":[1087],"class_list":["post-5763","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-chelsea","category-transfers","tag-coaching-change"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5763","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5763"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5763\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5762"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5763"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5763"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5763"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}