Enzo Maresca won 13 out of his first 14 Championship matches as Leicester manager in 2023-24. The one game he lost? To Liam Rosenior’s Hull. The goalscorer in that 1-0 defeat? Liam Delap.

Who knew one otherwise innocuous fixture in English football’s second tier would some day carry such a Chelsea affiliation, now that Rosenior has been installed as Maresca's long-term successor - signing a contract until 2032.

Familiarity played its part in Rosenior winning the race to become the Blues’ next boss, and not only because he already knows Delap, or Andrey Santos, previously a loanee with Strasbourg, or Mamadou Sarr and Mike Penders and Kendry Paez, on loan there now, or Emmanuel Emegha, the striker who will be joining Chelsea from their French sister side this summer.

While a player for Hull, he would spend hours with a young analyst called Laurence Stewart, who is now Chelsea’s co-sporting director. While a player and coach at Brighton, he got to know Paul Winstanley, Chelsea’s other sporting director, and Sam Jewell, director of global recruiting.

While managing Strasbourg, we are told Rosenior was in daily contact with Stewart, Winstanley and Jewell, as well as Joe Shields, director of scouting and talent, and Dave Fallows, their new director of football development. 

Hell, Chelsea's finance department might not even need to ask him for his bank details after bringing him to Stamford Bridge.

There is a familiarity with the footballing idea, too. Last season, when Chelsea became the youngest team in Premier League history, the average age of their XIs over 2024-25 was 24 years and 36 days. Remarkably, Strasbourg’s line-ups were even younger, by a massive margin, too. Their average age was 21 years and 287 days – the youngest of any side in Europe’s elite leagues.

Strasbourg have only got younger this season, averaging 21 years and 261 days in 2025-26, and that is despite Ben Chilwell regularly starting at the age of 29 after arriving from Chelsea.

While a few fans will call this nepotism, Stamford Bridge insiders will tell you these existing relationships can only be beneficial, with Rosenior coming in with a clear understanding of how those around him work and full knowledge of the BlueCo operation.

At Strasbourg, Rosenior believed building connections was the greatest route to creating a successful culture within a club. At Chelsea, he is already fairly connected.

That Chelsea chose the 41-year-old - not to mention handing him a six-and-a-half-year contract - shows how highly they rate him as a coach, because they knew the optics would lead to awkwardness with Strasbourg supporters, at a time when their ultras group, Ultra Boys 90, already stage 15-minute silent protests at the start of each game.

Wayne Rooney, who had Rosenior as his assistant at Derby, has described him as as detailed a coach as he has ever encountered. Rosenior is young, articulate, ambitious, and, while a talented tactician, he is also not yet the finished article. He knows that, too, not carrying any delusions of grandeur. He still has plenty to prove, and is determined to do so. 

He also thinks it is important to use his press conferences to try to explain, clearly and concisely, the reasoning behind certain tactics so that fans can understand the game better.

Rosenior will be walking into a changing room filled with big names, from Cole Palmer to Moises Caicedo to Reece James to a World Cup winner in Enzo Fernandez. Grown men do not need to be told by which time they should be in bed, or that they cannot have a dollop of ketchup. 

He believes if he respects them, then they will respect him, and so does not advocate fining footballers for their no-nos. It is said he did not issue a single fine in his entire time at Strasbourg.

That does not mean he will take bad behaviour lying down, however.

Emegha is only 22, but he is also the Strasbourg captain and good enough to have received the call-up to sign for Chelsea this summer. When Emegha committed one too many faux pas in media interviews, including telling a Dutch newspaper that he previously thought Strasbourg was in Germany, Rosenior had a long talk with him. 

He explained exactly why his words were damaging, and how he had to lead off the pitch as well as on it.

Together with Strasbourg president Marc Keller and sporting director David Weir, they suspended the striker for their next Ligue 1 match versus Toulouse. Strasbourg lost 1-0, but Rosenior saw it as necessary. He believes players learn a far greater lesson if you take away their game-time.

Over the years, Rosenior has continued to add to a 450-page PowerPoint presentation which lives on his laptop. It is a document full of his learnings, with Sir Alex Ferguson and Brian Clough two of his footballing inspirations as leaders. They had their players’ backs, and it was the same when Emegha was in need of support also.

When Strasbourg's supporters criticised the youngster for signing a pre-agreement with Chelsea – producing a banner which read ‘Emegha, pawn of BlueCo’ after he had been pictured at Cobham holding the shirt of another club – Rosenior told them it was ‘unacceptable’.

As pub quiz questions go, naming the two Chelsea head coaches you can associate with Donald Trump is bound to have a few patrons staring into their pints.

The answers, of course, would be Maresca and Rosenior. One received the Club World Cup trophy from the US President, while the other once wrote an open letter in The Guardian to Trump calling for justice and equal human rights for black people.

But that 2020 takedown of dear, old Donald was a well-written piece of proof that the Blues’ newest boss is empathetic, eloquent, a thinker not afraid to tackle the biggest issues.

Chelsea hope, in time, everyone else will see why they believe they have hired one of the best up-and-coming British coaches, not only tactically but for the culture he is capable of creating within a club.