Rosen appointed Performance Manager for Sweden

FORMER Blackburn Rovers Performance Director Ben Rosen has been appointed as the new Performance Manager for the Sweden national team.

The move reunites him with manager Jon Dahl Tomasson, with whom he worked for Denmark, Malmo and Blackburn Rovers. Dane Tomasson was appointed as the first foreign-born manager of Sweden at the end of February. Rosen worked for Rovers from June 2022 to the end of February this year, leaving shortly after Tomasson exited the Championship club.

The Englishman had been in talks with League One Burton Albion about becoming their first Director of Football, but opted to join Tomasson with Sweden instead. He started his career as an intern with Southampton in 2011, going on to become their Lead First Team Sport Scientist under Mauricio Pochettino. In 2014, at the age of just 23, he joined Malmo, helping them to win the Swedish league title and qualify for the group stages of the Champions League.

In 2016, he became Head of Fitness for the Danish national team, while continuing his full-time job with Malmo. This was when he first worked with Tomasson, who was Assistant Manager for the Danes. In September 2020, he became Head of Fitness and Conditioning at FC Copenhagen, helping them win last season’s Danish league title.

Rosen’s prospective move to become Director of Football at Burton may seem unusual, because few performance practitioners make this transition, but he has had some involvement in recruitment, as Blackburn Director of Football Gregg Broughton revealed in an interview with TGG last week.

Rosen was the person who identified Sammie Szmodics as a target for the club. The forward is currently top scorer in both the Championship and FA Cup. At the time of his signing, in the summer of 2022, Szmodics had just been relegated with Peterborough United and had scored seven goals in 39 games.

Broughton told TGG: “We realised that if we wanted to be more effective as a counter-pressing team, we wanted to add something different.

"It was Ben Rosen’s shortlist he created for the recruitment team that highlighted Sammie - firstly because of his running data in a relegated team at Peterborough, but secondly for his goal return, especially in the limited games they played him as a 10, because Peterborough tended to use him on the left.

“Sammy hadn’t ever featured on the club’s long or shortlists before.”

This season Szmodics has scored 27 goals for Blackburn and been capped by the Republic of Ireland for the first time. Burton will now wait until the summer before deciding whether to pursue a Director of Football appointment, TGG understand.

Burton are one of only eight teams in 24-team League One not to currently have a Director of Football or equivalent. Port Vale sacked their Director of Football, David Flitcroft, last week.