Can Frank Lampard take Chelsea to Champions League glory? Roberto Di Matteo showed him how
Frank Lampard has made a remarkable return as Chelsea manager and a fellow Blues legend has shown him the path to glory, writes TOM RODDY.
The romantics around Stamford Bridge see Frank Lampard’s return to Chelsea as a resumption to the story. Robbed of his opportunity to manage in the Champions League knockout stage two years ago, when Lampard was sacked and his successor, Thomas Tuchel, inherited the team that won the competition, Chelsea’s most famous son has the chance to write the most spectacular of finales to the fairytale.
“This is my club,” Lampard declared on Thursday, back at Chelsea’s Surrey training base after being named the caretaker manager until the end of the season. The Englishman’s second spell begins with a trip to Molineux on Saturday; it was Wolverhampton Wanderers next up on the fixture list when Lampard was fired two years ago.
“In terms of unfinished business, I don’t quite see it like that,” the 44-year-old said. “When you become a manager, you understand that you don’t manage the club you say is yours for ever. I’ve been on a different path since I left Chelsea [being sacked by relegation-threatened Everton] but to come back at a time when the club have asked me to take the role, that’s the most important thing – but also [having] the belief that I can come and help the cause. I’m here in a different period, a different era and I just want to do as well as I can. Unfinished business sounds a little bit Hollywood.”
Chelsea have, by far, become the Premier League’s answer to Hollywood given the club’s recent history of sanctions, sales and mega-money signings. Here is Lampard’s chance at a comeback and another chapter in his Chelsea trilogy, after his 13 gilded years as a midfielder. Few expected it under three months ago when Everton, 19th in the Premier League table, sacked Lampard and he left with question marks over his coaching career.
“Is it your opinion Antonio Conte is a bad manager when he has just left Tottenham?” Lampard asked. “Is it your opinion that Thomas Tuchel is a bad manager? From a selfish point of view I want to do my best in this period because I have a professional ego where I want to be the best I can be.
“It is not worth talking about risk [in taking the role]. It is about working out how you can get results game by game. There will always be judgment from the outside. Certainly, as a manager you cannot hold too much to what people see as success or failure.”
Few would argue that Chelsea’s season, the first of the Todd Boehly-Clearlake Capital era, is falling in the latter category. They are 11th in the Premier League table, 14 points off the top four, and almost certainly not going to qualify for the Champions League unless Lampard wins the competition this year. The stories told around Stamford Bridge suggest it’s possible. Lampard was part of the team that lifted the Champions League trophy for the first time in the club’s history in 2012.
There are parallels. Club legend Roberto Di Matteo took the reins as a caretaker after Andre Villas-Boas, the young up-and-coming coach, had been dismissed. Chelsea’s march towards Munich and immortality began. Can history repeat itself?
“I don’t think it’s worth speaking about past moments,” Lampard said. “Roberto did an incredible job – that’s a different part of Chelsea’s history.”
Lampard’s task is far taller than Di Matteo’s. Lampard left the club only two years ago but five members of the starting line-up that drew 0-0 with Liverpool on Tuesday were among the influx of players signed in the record-breaking £600 million spending spree in the past two transfer windows.
Lampard’s legacy during his first stint on the sidelines was the development of young stars such as Reece James, Mason Mount, Tammy Abraham and Fikayo Tomori. A drop in form and a dramatic fall down the table to ninth, led to Roman Abramovich, the former owner, making his most brutal sacking.
“I’ve definitely changed and I took some things that I changed on to Everton,” Lampard said. “I’ve always been open to listening, looking and learning. I’m certainly not a person who sits here and says I’ve got all the answers.”
He has plans, though. “I have my idea about where I want to go. I watched the team, so credit to Bruno [Saltor] who took the team [against Liverpool], credit to Graham Potter, who I don’t know that well but … he’s a good man and a very good coach, and sometimes for whatever reason things don’t align. I’ve been in that situation personally. There’s nothing that I will do that will look backwards other than with a view to how we move forward.”
Lampard’s Chelsea story has resumed, his career offered an unlikely revival. Does a Hollywood ending await?
Originally published as Can Frank Lampard take Chelsea to Champions League glory? Roberto Di Matteo showed him how
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