The Champions League could have a new team next season with a surprisingly familiar face at the help.
Ligue 1’s Strasbourg kept their impressive unbeaten momentum going on Friday night as they humbled rivals for European football, Lyon, 4-2 at home.
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The result lifts them above OL and into fifth in the table, only a point off the top four.
It also continues a stellar six-game unbeaten run that’s seen five wins and five clean sheets.
Masterminding all of this has been Liam Rosenior, best known for his time as a full-back in the Premier League with Fulham, Reading, Hull and Brighton.
Rosenior took his first steps in coaching with Derby as a caretaker manager in 2022, and later re-joined Hull for his first full-time senior management role.
After a 15th-place Championship finish in 2022/23, when he joined mid-season, he took the team to seventh next time out, narrowly missing out on the play-offs.
Impressed by what they saw, BlueCo, who also own Chelsea, snapped up the 40-year-old who is now making a name for himself in France.
Excluding runaway leaders Paris Saint-Germain, Strasbourg are now Ligue 1’s form team, and look best equipped to make the most of the last seven games.
And Rosenior isn’t doing anything to dampen his players’ expectations, in fact, quite the opposite.
Speaking ahead of the win over Lyon, he told the media: “You’re in football to dream. I never want to limit my players’ dreams.
“We’re four points off with eight games to go, of course it’s possible.”
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Strasbourg were last in Europe when they failed to make it through the Europa League play-offs in 2019.
Their last run in the Champions League was back in 1979/80 when it was called the European Cup, showing how remarkable a feat it would be.
Yet expectations were slightly higher this season, given the influence of Todd Boehly and Clearlake Capital.
Strasbourg have two Chelsea loanees in goalkeeper Dorde Petrovic and midfielder Andrey Santos.
There’s Premier League influence elsewhere too, with more loanees in Andrew Omobamidele (Nottingham Forest), Sam Amo-Ameyaw (Southampton) and Valentin Barco (Brighton).
Santos and Amo-Ameyaw both scored in the win over Lyon, with the former making a name for himself as one of Ligue 1’s best midfielders.
Rosenior isn’t the only England coach in Ligue 1, with half-Belgian Will Still also leading Lens, meaning the French top flight has the same number of Englishmen in the dugout as the Premier League (Graham Potter and Eddie Howe).
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