Chelsea must grow up after PSG implosion as Liam Rosenior pays for big error | OneFootball

Naivety kills the Blues’ Champions League hopes - and head coach must shoulder the blame

Chelsea are the Champions League’s youngest team this season, their average-aged player 164 days younger than the next youngest team’s.

Naturally, that team is PSG, and yet they cast Chelsea as so much the junior partner in a final 16 minutes of action described by Liam Rosenior as “crazy” but it was more calamitous as far as his team were concerned.

The astonishing thing is that Chelsea were level at 2-2 after 74 minutes and good value for the draw they were on track to claim.

Costly error: Vitinha lobs Filip Jorgensen after the goalkeeper’s gaffe

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It was the manner of their collapse, the free pass they awarded to the European champions to flood forward and attack in precisely the way they’d have most craved, that should so concern Rosenior. Chelsea let PSG play, so of course they did.

The Chelsea head coach must shoulder the blame. His call to select Filip Jorgensen in goal over previous No1 Robert Sanchez was a decision that blew up in his face in Paris.

He explained afterwards that Jorgensen is the better ball-player, Sanchez the finer shot-stopper, and yet trying to bait the continent’s best pressing team onto an inexperienced goalkeeper was more of a dance with the devil than a well-judged risk.

It didn’t matter how sound his passing had been before once Bradley Barcola had blocked his short pass and allowed Vitinha to lob the stranded goalkeeper for 3-2.

Jorgensen’s confidence was shot in an instant, and he allowed Khvicha Kvaratskhelia’s shot to squirm through him deep in stoppage time to effectively end the tie.

Then, when the final whistle blew, Jorgensen, no doubt feeling humiliated, initially refused captain Reece James’s instructions to head over to the travelling away fans, instead marching straight to the tunnel.

Crestfallen: Enzo Fernandez applauds the Chelsea travelling support in Paris

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It took a pep talk from Sanchez — the man Chelsea fans will want reinstated between the sticks against Newcastle on Saturday — for Jorgensen to finally trudge over to the supporters. Not facing the music after his mistakes was a bad note to end his poor night on.

Chelsea’s cardinal sin was allowing PSG to tear forward and use the searing pace of their magnificent attackers in those frantic final 16 minutes.

The Blues lost track of their game plan, stopped plugging the gaps, PSG’s press became more aggressive, acres of space opened up, and they ran up the score.

Rosenior has talked much about the “perfect 90 minutes” but his team were a long way from producing it here. In the game for 74 minutes, they were as good as out of the tie by the end of the next 16.

Malo Gusto, who would go on to score Chelsea's first goal, had been asked on Tuesday how much confidence and inspiration the team would bring into their last-16 first leg from last summer’s Club World Cup final, when PSG were thrashed 3-0 by an irrepressible Chelsea in New Jersey.

Late show: Khvicha Kvaratskhelia celebrates scoring PSG’s fourth goal

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This was now the Champions League though, Gusto explained. It would be “completely different”. How right he was.

It was an open game, a real spectacle, until Chelsea let slip their side of the bargain.

Rosenior and his coaching staff should accept that it was a mistake to invite PSG onto them as they did.

Chelsea have made 249 changes to their starting XIs this season, the most of any side in Europe’s major leagues, and Rosenior — not helped by his lineup being leaked to French media eight hours before kick-off — must be honest enough with himself to accept that the big call of the night, picking Jorgensen over Sanchez, was an error.

Enzo Fernandez made a beeline for Chelsea’s travelling fans after scoring assuredly to level the match at 2-2 with just over half an hour to play.

His celebration after clawing back parity with the European champions was to point emphatically at the badge in the centre of his shirt. ‘World champions.’ Beat that, his message.

That moment — and Chelsea’s active status in this two-legged tie — felt a lifetime ago by the time Kvaratskhelia claimed his brace with almost the last kick of the game.