Famous football player, now coach Frank Lampard celebrates his 45th birthday. On his birthday, a member of the English Football Hall of Fame Sports talks about the hardest test in his midfield career, which he coped with superbly.
How Chelsea degraded
There is no other way to describe the 2022/23 season, held by the Londoners. Everything was bad, even transfers, which in winter were uncountable. Coaches changed, the pattern of the game was redrawn, but the leadership that replaced Roman Abramovich and his understanding of football did not change. The club failed in the cups of England and the English League, ran into Real again in the quarter-finals of the UEFA Champions League and hit the bottom in the English Premier League (EPL). Such a Blues fans could not even dream of in a nightmare: the final 12th (worst result in 29 years) place and 16 lost matches out of 38 in the national championship.
br>
Let's state that the birthday boy who came to save the six-time champions of England at the end of the season also had a hand in the collapse of Chelsea. Together with him, the team never left the field without conceded goals and won only once in 11 matches. Eight of them ended in defeat.In contrast, I remember the second half of the 2000s, when Chelsea reached the prime. Yes, the first Champions League victory came only in 2012, but in 2008 the Blues' assembly was perhaps the best in the history of the Londoners. Petr Cech and John Terry, Ricardo Carvalho and Michael Essien, Lampard and Michael Ballack, Florent Malouda and Didier Drogba all took the club to the Champions League final in Moscow for the first time.
But there might not have been a step towards the «eared» trophy. After all, in the second leg with Liverpool (regular time of both meetings ended with a score of 1: 1), Lampard came up to take a penalty in the 98th minute … Five days earlier, he had lost his mother. Pat Lampard, mother of Chelsea legend and wife of former West Ham player Frank Sr, has died at the age of 59 after a brief battle with pneumonia. The woman burned to death in a matter of days, knocking Frank down for years to come./
However, on April 30, 2008, the football player entered the field on autopilot and did his job. The Englishman, drowning in sorrow, approached the “point” (in the Champions League semi-final!) and calmly spread the ball and Pepe Reina in different corners. «Stamford Bridge» at that moment roared, watching his son from the podium, the father gave a standing ovation. Having lost the dearest person, Frank kissed the mourning bandage, collapsed on the lawn and, it seemed, burst into tears in the arms of his teammates.
The match ended with the score 3:2.
«
“The death of his mother hit Lampard hard, but he played beyond praise. A very courageous person. He was so attached to his mother, and the events of recent days frankly knocked him down. It was Lampard's own decision to play! I admit, I doubted … But now I can say that Frank performed amazingly, completely surrendering to the match. (Associated Press)
Abraham Grant
Former Chelsea manager
That April match at Stamford Bridge and the emotional boom after Lampard's decisive goal made the team even more united. And while the Blues lost on penalties to Manchester United in the final, Grant's team had nothing to be ashamed of. Chelsea did not lose to the stars of Sir Alex Ferguson in the game, just on the side of the «red devils» were the wet turf of «Luzhniki» and good luck. br>By the way, in the final Lampard equalized and once again dedicated the goal to his mother.
«
“Frank made a bold move when he decided to take part in the match against Liverpool. He did everything right when he took on the 11-meter kick. He scored the decisive goal, and then marked the goal the way he did. Mom meant so much to Frank, and it's great that he was able to honor her memory in such a way. I was happy for our whole team, but especially for Frank, because he was going through a difficult period. (UEFA website)
Petr Cech
Former Chelsea goalkeeper
Mama's Son
We repeat: Lampard did not soon move away from the loss. As the athlete admitted more than once in an interview, he was haunted everywhere by emptiness, which he could not cope with. Things and places—the convenience store, his favorite downtown restaurants—hurt so much that Frank avoided them. He increasingly began to appear in church in search of answers.
«
«You can call me a sissy. Always has been and always will be. I can’t find any rational explanation for this, which is why her departure hit me so hard. My wife used to love to make fun of me, because every time I was sick, even at 29, I always called my mother. And then she left, left so suddenly … There was no time to get used to it. football player, it wouldn't change anything. He was approached by the Italian Inter, which was headed by an old acquaintance of José Mourinho, but Lampard decided that it would be wrong to change the club registration. After all, he would have done this not because of the desire to protect the colors of the Nerazzurri, but because of the loss of his mother. As a result, he played until 2014, and after 13 years in a blue T-shirt, he ended up in a blue Manchester City jersey.