Ex-Liverpool star Albert Riera is making Liam Rosenior look like a coaching genius
Updated: 16 May 2026 10:07 BST |
13 min read
When trying to rank the worst managerial appointments of the past 12 months – and there have been plenty – Liam Rosenior’s spell at Chelsea will invariably be at the top for many, but what if we told you that former Liverpool winger Albert Riera has made the Blues’ mess look like child’s play at Eintracht Frankfurt?
There are plenty of parallels between Rosenior and Riera. The latter had a more high-profile playing career, making 16 appearances for Spain and winning a few trophies here and there, but he was hardly a titan of the game.
Both went into the season as coaching hotshots. Rosenior, thanks to heavy investment from BlueCo, had qualified a previously relegation-battling Strasbourg side for Europe. Riera, meanwhile, had made a name for himself in Slovenia, winning trophies with Olimpija Ljubljana and Celje.
Both arrived at their new clubs mid-season, and things unravelled pretty quickly, albeit in different ways. Chelsea’s players never took Rosenior seriously, and the 41-year-old “supply teacher” quickly became a laughing stock.
For Riera, the experience has been different and much more… intense. Describing the Spaniard as a hard man would not be entirely correct. Rather, he has cultivated the image of someone who would die for his club, and he expects his players to have the same attitude.
Albert Riera: A difficult character
At Eintracht Frankfurt, his extreme approach has backfired spectacularly. Instead of securing buy-in from the squad like he had managed to do in Slovenia, his players are in open revolt against him. They hate his guts, to put it bluntly.
Even before Riera arrived at Frankfurt, there were major concerns over his suitability for the role. He is a very different personality from his predecessor Dino Toppmoller, who is a fairly pleasant, arm-around-your-shoulder type of character and coach.
Riera, on the other hand, is certainly not the most likeable guy you will ever meet. His us-against-the-world approach to management borders on delusion.
In 2023/24, by the end of his brief time at Bordeaux, whom he left when they were relegated from Ligue 2 to the amateur ranks due to their finances after leading them to a historically low finish, the 44-year-old had become persona non grata in French football.
For some reason, Riera approached every game as though it were a life-or-death struggle with the other team and manager. He repeatedly clashed with his counterparts and made insulting comments on an almost weekly basis.
He looked down upon others and gloated when fellow managers lost their job. “When I arrived, I said that I had 23 or 25 playing systems. Someone replied, ‘You just need one system!’ That someone is no longer a coach today,” Riera crowed after Regis Brouard was sacked by Bastia.
The Team eventually ran a feature on Riera in which senior figures around Ligue 2 were asked to share their thoughts on the Spaniard. “Arrogant, blunt and uncollegial,” was the headline of the article, and the content of the piece wasn’t any more complimentary.
Saint-Etienne boss Olivier Dall’Oglio was fed up with Riera, who had allegedly slapped one of ASSE’s players during a scuffle in the tunnel, after the Bordeaux boss insisted that his side had been the better team in a 2-1 loss.
“Everyone analyses their match as they want,” Dall’Oglio dismissed Riera. “We didn’t watch the same match, but that’s not a problem, I’m not wasting my time on that.”
You would think that dragging a proud club like Bordeaux into the mire would have been a humbling experience. Not for Riera. He stuck with his confrontational approach when he returned to Slovenia to take charge of Celje.
His side faced Shamrock Rovers in Europe in back-to-back seasons, so of course, Riera harboured a personal vendetta against Stephen Bradley. The two had clashed in 2024/25 and again feuded at the start of this campaign.
“The man has no class whatsoever in any aspect. I think it’s quite clear to see that with him,” Bradley said after the two refused to shake hands. “So yeah, there’s no point in pretending to like each other.
“Last year, he showed us no respect and afterwards he was talking and saying they’d come here and beat us, ‘blah, blah, blah.’ We beat them. But how he’s spoken sums him up really.”
Riera dismissed Bradley’s criticism and pointed out that Celje were “far away” the better team, before launching a personal attack on the long-time Rovers coach: “Even winning here in this country, and you stay in this country still. And not (being wanted by a club) abroad, I think this means something.”
The Spaniard was oblivious to the fact that Bradley had consciously chosen to remain in Dublin over the years to care for his sick son, who was diagnosed with leukaemia in 2022.
“If he did his homework, he would see my personal situation the last few years and what my priority was the last few years, so he obviously hasn’t done his homework and he hasn’t spoken to people around football or over this side of the world,” Bradley responded.
“And that’s fine, that’s his ignorance and that sums him up. That’s the lack of class the man has.”
Riera’s incredible downfall
When he was appointed by Frankfurt, he immediately set the tone for what was to come. In his first press conference, Riera claimed that, “If I tell the players to jump off the balcony, they will jump.”
He was widely ridiculed in the German press, and his comments also failed to strike a chord with his players. His first game ended in a 1-1 draw with a middling Union Berlin side.
After saying that he wanted his team to put on a show, Riera was thoroughly outcoached by Steffen Baumgart, who would lose his job just over two months later. Union allowed Frankfurt to have the ball because they knew Riera’s men wouldn’t be able to do anything meaningful with it.
After the game, though, the Spaniard claimed that it had been a masterful performance. “I don’t know how many games or months this team had gone without feeling like the boss on the pitch. Today, I saw it in their faces: they enjoyed feeling like the boss of the game.”
His team had “smelled blood like a shark,” and there was more to come, he insisted. Frankfurt have won four of the subsequent 12 matches. They were eighth when the Spaniard took over, and they are now up to… eighth.
Worse still, discord within the dressing room has boiled over into all-out war. Riera has repeatedly made questionable personnel decisions that have not gone down well with the squad. He recently omitted World Cup winner Mario Gotze from a game, which left teammates stunned.
He then dropped attacking wonderkid Can Uzun – again to the amazement of the players – and publicly criticised him for his lack of defensive work. Almost immediately, reports from reliable sources suggested that the Turkey international was looking to leave the club because of Riera.
Ahead of a recent game against Hamburg, reports in the media began spreading that there was major tension in the dressing room and that Riera had clashed with several players. His run-in with striker Jonathan Burkhardt had been particularly intense.
Asked about it at his pre-match press conference, the Spaniard snapped. “We’re not in a pub or a circus here,” he thundered. “This is a serious football club. Perhaps you think this is a pub and are talking to agents and journalists.
“There is poison around this building, but not inside this building,” he added. “We have a fantastic relationship with the players.” When asked about the rift with Burkhardt, he insisted that the rumours were “total bulls***.”
Clearly, though, they weren’t. Last weekend, Burkhardt scored against Borussia Dortmund and celebrated angrily, pointing in the direction of Riera and shouting something. At the time, it wasn’t clear if he had actually targeted his coach or someone else.
Now we know that he did target the coach. According to BILDthe striker called Riera a “motherf*****” in Spanish and admitted to it when confronted with video evidence by the 44-year-old on Tuesday. Burkhardt has been fined €20,000 and could yet face more sanctions.
It has been a box office few months of Riera at Frankfurt, and thankfully for everyone involved, his time at the club will come to an end after today’s game against Stuttgart. Frankfurt acknowledge that they got this appointment spectacularly wrong and will part ways with the Spaniard.
Had the Eagles been thrashed by Dortmund last weekend, Riera would likely have already been sacked. A narrow 3-2 loss secured his stay of execution, and he will have a chance to say goodbye to Frankfurt’s fans at home today.
He won’t be missed, but he doesn’t care. “My only worry is the game against Stuttgart,” Riera said on Friday. “After that, I have a great summer ahead of me, probably in Mallorca.”
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Tom Weber is an experienced, multilingual sports writer who specialises in European football and American soccer as part of his freelance work for FootballTransfers.
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