Real Madrid, Chelsea return to Champions League with rookie coaches in season of firings

Real Madrid’s head coach Alvaro Arbeloa [AP Photo]

Real Madrid and Chelsea resume in the Champions League this week after the winter break with new coaches working in the competition for the first time.

Job losses are a strong theme in a season where patience has run thin in the board room and 11 of the 36 Champions League clubs changed coach.

Nine of the 11 were fired, the latest being Xabi Alonso one week ago when Madrid removed him after barely seven months and well set in seventh in the Champions League standings.

Madrid’s new coach Álvaro Arbeloa will take charge of just the third game of his career when hosting Monaco on Wednesday. The last time Madrid hired a novice coach mid-season, Zinedine Zidane’s appointment in January 2016 led to three straight Champions League titles.

Chelsea replaced its Club World Cup-winning coach Enzo Maresca with Liam Rosenior — who had led sister club Strasbourg to top the third-tier Conference League standings — and will host Pafos on Wednesday.

Monaco and Pafos have also changed coaches. Monaco fired Adi Hütter in October and went to another Champions League team, Union Saint-Gilloise, to lure its Belgian league-winning coach Sébastien Pocognoli.

Pafos’s coach in the first half of the season, Juan Carlos Carcedo, bought out his contract this month to return to Spartak Moscow. Pafos hired another Spaniard, Albert Celades, who was in Madrid’s Champions League-winning squad in 2002 and later played at New York Red Bulls.

Also firing their coach this season were Ajax, Atalanta — now fifth in the standings — Benfica, Club Brugge, Juventus and Bayer Leverkusen, which gave Erik Ten Hag just three games before the Champions League even began.

Benfica fired Bruno Lage one day after an opening home loss against Qarabag and hired José Mourinho. The two-time European champion was himself fired at Fenerbahce for losing in the qualifying playoffs to Benfica.

Few would be surprised if Tottenham joins the list before the final round of Champions League opening-phase games next week.

Inter-Arsenal

Stability reigns at Arsenal and Inter Milan, the Premier League and Serie A leaders who meet in the highest profile game of the week of first versus sixth in the standings.

Mikel Arteta’s Arsenal is the only team with six straight wins and now goes back to the scene of its only loss in last season’s league phase. Then, a Hakan Çalhanoglu penalty was decisive at San Siro.

Inter matched Arsenal’s pace through four rounds in its first season coached by Cristian Chivu, then lost back-to-back games to Atletico Madrid and Liverpool.

Inter likely needs to avoid a third loss to stay on track for the round of 16. Last season it took 16 points to secure a top-eight finish and avoid the playoffs round in February.

Chill Man City

When UEFA made the match schedule in steamy, humid Monaco in August, a key question was who would have to visit the Arctic Circle in January.

Manchester City was the answer, playing at Bodø/Glimt on Tuesday.

Still, the forecast temperatures at game time are barely below freezing in the early evening in star striker Erling Haaland’s native Norway.

Man City, the 2023 European champion, already has 13 points in fourth place, unlike the last-day drama last January needing to win just to squeeze into the knockout playoffs 22nd in the standings.

Højlund’s return

Napoli forward Rasmus Højlund returns Tuesday to hometown club Copenhagen which once sold him for less than 2 million euros ($2.3 million) to Sturm Graz.

The price soared to 77 million euros ($89.6 million) about 18 months later when Højlund moved to Manchester United from Atalanta. Napoli, where he is spending the season on loan, is the 22-year-old Højlund’s fourth club since leaving Copenhagen four years ago.

Far east

Two teams in the far east of Europe — Qarabag and Kairat Almaty — both have home games this week because their distant times zones mean they will not host on the decisive last round.

All 18 games on Jan. 29 must start simultaneously to ensure fair play, at 9 p.m. in Central Europe, when it would be 1 a.m. at Almaty in Kazakhstan.

Still, it will be an early 4:30 p.m. in central Europe when Kairat kicks off against Club Brugge at 8:30 p.m. local time Tuesday. Qarabag hosts Eintracht Frankfurt in an early game Wednesday. GRAHAM DUNBAR, Sports Writer, MDT/AP