Frank Lampard reveals the secret to his successful playing career! | Making It Pro

The players now, I have to tell them how lucky they are every day that they can go home at two o'clock and I'm still here doing this with you two. Frank, how are you? It's good, thank you. Good to see you. Good to see you both. Frank, how are you doing? We're here at Chelsea to talk to you about your career in football. I want to rewind the clock all the way back to when you were just a little kid. Okay. Did you always love football from a boy's age? Oh yes, without a doubt. I was born into a footballing family. My dad played for West Ham for 20 years, my uncle Harry Redknapp, my cousin Jamie. So I didn't have much choice, or I didn't want a choice because from my early days I remember having a ball in my hand, my feet all the time in the garden. As I started to go to school, days back from school, kicking about off the wall. Old school, practising my basic skills. What did you use to use as a goal? Just probably jumpers or trees. I remember I had a tree in my garden and I maybe needed a jumper and the tree. And I had a little wall out the front of my front door, really. So I was literally constantly like bang, bang, bang, just right foot, left foot. And because my dad was an ex-player, he wasn't just casually sitting there going, do it, use your left foot, do it, do your head in, do your sprints and all that. Really competitive. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So from a very young age I was sort of doing drills at a really simple level. But I loved the game. I loved it, I was born into it, yeah. Did you feel the pressure? You mentioned your footballing family, your uncle, your dad. Did you really feel the pressure that you had to become a professional footballer almost because of the football family that you come from? Yeah, to a degree. I mean, had to is a big word because because my dad was involved in the game, he knew how difficult it was. So everybody, not everybody, but a lot of young people now want to play the game. We love the game of football. Obviously, it's on a worldwide level. But the ratios and the chances to get to the top are difficult. And, you know, my dad was very aware of that. So he was always reminding me of what might not be and if you don't work hard and all those sort of things. So I wouldn't say I had to, but I was I was nicely pushed. I loved the game always anyway. But yeah, as I got older, I remember feeling really determined that, you know, I started to train at professional clubs whilst I was at school. I felt like I was one of the better players at school. Not always the best. I wasn't always the number one in the team that I played at, but I had a lot of dedication. So probably having that family upbringing that I'm talking about helped me. It made me really aware of what it would take to try and get to the top. And you mentioned your family there. Our mate at Sky, Jamie Redknapp, of course, for you. What age did you first start playing football with your cousin, Jamie, in the back garden? There's four years between us. So from that very young age, I would have played. I remember going to Bournemouth where they lived, their family down from Essex to Bournemouth on summer holidays, probably from the age of about seven upwards. And I remember as I started to get into my low teens and Jamie was already then on a bit of a breakthrough. He was sort of 17. Good looking, great hair style. He had the shirt, do you remember the Ralph Lauren shirt? Well, you won't remember. I remember in my era, the Ralph Lauren shirts were the ones and he had the better ones than I had. I had the little basic ones and he had the patterned ones. And no, I used to go down and spend a lot of time with him. And we were in the garden all the time. And I've told this story before, actually, but we used to, he used to have a birdcage in his parents' and Harry and Sandra's garden and he used to stand there and we just used to try and smash balls at it. Trying to hit the top bit, you know, the top bit of the birdcage. And Jamie was obviously better than me. I remember he was four years advanced and seemingly had everything. And I'd just sort of go there and just look up to him and we'd spend hours practising our right foot, left foot, different sort of passes. And education was big for you. I know that I've interviewed you previously this year. We spoke about your IQ being very high, your A-star in Latin and how much you enjoyed your time at school. And it was a tough decision at your GCSE age whether to go into football or education, wasn't it? Tell us a bit about that. Yeah, well, I mean, in the end, it probably wasn't tough, but it was as tough as it could be because I love football so much. And I realised the opportunity I had to go and sign an apprenticeship with West Ham. And my dad had told me and I knew that it felt like a necessity if I wanted to give everything to my footballing life, that I had to go and put in those hours and you only do that as an apprenticeship is the best way to do that at the time. So I always felt that that was the way it was going. But because the school had been good, because my parents had pushed me, I wasn't an outstanding pupil. I wasn't. I'd got an A-star in Latin, probably because I was attentive, wanting to please my teachers. So, you know, I would try and revise. Might be that last minute kind of revision, you know what I mean, cramming it in. And just try and get good results. So I did pretty well. And then when you went to the West Ham Academy, how easy did you find that sort of transition? Because obviously you had really strong family ties to the club. Did you find any sort of problems in the dressing room with sort of jealousy amongst your teammates or anything like that? In the youth team, no, not really. Maybe in small doses. In the youth team, probably some of the best days of your life because you spend so much time together. You've got a common goal is that you all want to be professional footballers. At that time, you're training, you're pushing, you spend hours cleaning the gym, picking up balls, you know, sort of. And you just can't believe your luck that you're in an environment that you obviously want to go up the ladders in. And I loved it. We were great friends. People like, you know, Rio Ferdinand. He was a year younger than me, but we were in the same youth team. Lots of players I could name that sort of gone on and had decent careers or gone out of the game. But at the time it was it was special and it was a club I grew up supporting. So no, there were proper times. And if there was any moments of jealousy, it was probably human nature. I probably some people might have looked at me and said, oh, his dad's the coach, his uncle's the manager. And none of it really got in my way. And in fact, it was part of the learning curve. You know, if you have little moments like that, it almost made me tougher as I kind of got along. But I have no bad memories of those youth team days. They were brilliant. And they were so much part of the process of not just learning your trade on the pitch, but learning what you need to be a professional footballer, the work ethic, understanding the professional some of the first team players and you clean their boots and they'd have little chats with you and sort of drive you on. They were huge parts of it. And signing your first ever professional contract, pen in hand. How did that moment feel for you? Special, special, because it really meant something. Turned 17, signed a two year contract at the time at West Ham and it was a huge deal. What that meant from being an apprentice was a great thing. An honour to be part of the club. That means a little bit of, OK, I might have a chance here. I might have something. And actually, the club believed in me a little bit. So when you feel that the belief from the club that they think you're worthy of that, then it was it was a real confidence boost. The moment that Chelsea came in for me, it was a no brainer. I'd spoken to a couple of clubs before, but this was a club that they sold division to me. The players that were there were players that I'd sat watching on the sofa the year before. I remember Chelsea playing Liverpool and playing really well at Anfield and it was Zola, Desai, Poirier, Wise. And they kept the ball and I thought, wow, what great football. And then all of a sudden they want you. And it felt a bigger club straight away. And because of the names that I mentioned, World Cup winners that were playing there. And I realised I had a price tag. And I realised now that I was in a different position where people would expect a lot more from me. That was something that was probably challenging in the first place. Did you do an initiation prank? We talked about you signing for Chelsea. We skirted over that fact. Did you have to do an initiation? No, I thought I'd missed that. I did. I sang. Maybe it's because I'm a Londoner. I don't think I know that one. Yeah, no, I did. And we were in pre-season in Italy. It was a long two weeks, really long. Me and Jodie Morris, my sister, now we room together. It was an interesting two weeks. And it was very remote. And I think I had it. My song was on about day 12 or 14. So I had a long time to think about it. Really, I wanted it out of the way. And I used to sit in my room and I'd go, shall I go Sinatra? And then shall I do it? And then no, and I thought maybe it's a bit more of like you can just sort of bounce on the chair. And I just remember standing on the chair and just seeing Zola and Desai and Hasselbank with their eyes. Yeah, you know, like you just think, I'm going to cut the beers for this. And a lot of people that we spoke to from your playing days used to always say best trainer, whenever we used to ask about training, Frank Lampard, Frank Lampard, that how much you used to stay behind and work on your game. You've obviously talked about coming from a football background. You had a lot of natural ability, clearly. But did you feel that that was a big part of your development? You had to constantly, constantly work on your game. Yeah, it was. It was the biggest part for me. I think football is, I don't know the percentages, but let's say 50 percent talent, 50 percent work ethic and mentality. That's how I saw it. For some, it might be different than others. I knew that if I wasn't absolutely at my best, this carried on through my career as well, then I wouldn't be able to perform at the levels required for a club like Chelsea when I moved here or internationally. So I never felt that I had the most pace. Clearly, I didn't. It wasn't just me that didn't feel that. So I used to work on that religiously. I forever tried to find weaknesses in my game that I could work on to the point where it became an obsession. And if I felt I didn't work on them in the week, then it wouldn't come right at the weekend. And that became my career. And let's talk about about Jose Mourinho, because he was a massive part of your playing career as well. What was it when he first arrived that he changed? Was there anything specific you look back on? You think, wow, this is the moment I knew we're going to hit greatness. It was mentality. It was we'd been a team that had just squeezed into Europe the year before. Then we had one year where we came second with Claudio Ranieri, really good year, made the semifinals of the Champions League. But when Jose Mourinho walked into the building, it was like enough of this, but we're going to win. And we were all like, because we were quite impressed. Well, I certainly felt it. I was mid-twenties and had never really won anything. Probably didn't believe. Definitely, I had every little bit that you have to have to be a winner. And this man walked into the building and said, this is what we're going to do, lads. So we were like, OK, we better do this. And he used to write lists of games coming up. We're going to take 12 points out of 12 in this period. And then we're going to we're going to take another 12 in this period and all this sort of stuff. And it just changed our mindset. It certainly did for me. And I speak to a lot of the lads that were in that group. He was obviously great on the pitch, tactics and detail and, you know, getting all the little bits needed on the pitch. But for me, the main thing was self-confidence and belief and saying that we will be winners and we kind of bought into it. Frank, we can't not talk about Chelsea and talk about trophies. They're all on the wall behind us. I mean, you were pretty much here for, I think, nearly all of these, weren't you? Yeah, maybe the last couple, which you can't see. Highlight of all of them. I think I've heard you say before, Champions League one. Where is it? 2012 Champions League. There it is. Yeah, on the right there. I mean, it's I don't want to belittle particularly the first Premier League 2005. Yeah. Because of what a huge thing that meant for us. It was 50 years since Chelsea had done it first for us as a group. I mentioned Mourinho said we're going to be winners. There you go. We were at the end of the year. So that was special and goosebumps when I think back. But nothing touches Munich. Munich was something that we fought for for near on 10 years. Five semifinals, six semifinals. The final that we lost in penalties and you're so close to doing it. And then to go and win it in the backyard of Bayern Munich, who are an incredible team. It was something so, so special in terms of for us as a players and group, for the fans in Munich, that my family all came, my friends all came. Best city. It was amazing. The hospitality of the Munich fans as well, to be fair. And the after party, which lasted about a week. Come on then. What happened? No, we stayed in a hotel and where we'd been staying and it had a pool on top. I actually went to bed and fell asleep, which is so not like. It was about four or five in the morning and it turned out they went back up top and everyone was jumping in the pool. Missed that, but then we travelled back to London and we had the parade around near Stamford Bridge. And then the next day, I remember we went to a concert at the O2. And then about two days later, my wife said to me, my wife now said to me, you just need to slow down a little bit. The game was about four or five days ago. Let's talk about England. You played in the golden generation, of course, we look at the names in that squad and it's phenomenal. Lampard, Gerrard, Scoles, Beckham, Rooney, Owen, Terry, Ferdinand. I mean, I'm probably disrespecting Ashley Cole players, I haven't even mentioned that, Gary Neville. Why do you think the England golden generation didn't win a major trophy for you? Some of that we can take on ourselves. I think we all are pretty honest and it's much easier after the event. Now we're pretty much all retired to say that we probably could have done better as a group. And I don't need to talk for them. I can say that for myself. But the main thing is, for me, is that it's tough. It's tough. And for all those names that you said, and I agree with you, that's why I'm saying we could have done better. We also, every two or four years, so it's not every week in the Chelsea, you can correct a bad result. With England, you can't correct a bad tournament for another two years. And we come up against Spain and then you come up against Germany and you come up against Brazil and all these teams. And, you know, you have to give respect to them. So, yeah, we could have done better. Certainly, there were tournaments we could have gone further and maybe our actual in-game performance could have been better. And that's on us. But in terms of winning those trophies, no one has a divine right. And and we missed it. And I'm proud of my caps. I would never take anything away from my England career. But of course, we all wish that we had gone further or actually won something. Let's talk about you as a manager then. Do you remember the day that you wanted to become a manager? Was there a specific moment you thought, OK, now is my time to move out of You were doing punditry at the time and go, right, I'm cracking on and I'm going to be the boss. I started to think it towards the end of my career, probably 30 plus, because you start to take in everything around you as opposed to just be selfish and think about yourself. You know, you become aware and think, how could I affect that? I was doing my coaching badges. So I knew I wanted to do it by that point. And only when I met the owner of Derby, Mel Morris, out of the blue, via Harry Redknapp, and he spoke to me and he sold the club to me. And it was a leap. It was a big leap of faith. Managerial life is so far different from players life. Yeah. And the highs are higher and the lows are probably lower. But the work in between is a lot more. And the players now have to tell them how lucky they are every day that they can go home at two o'clock. And I'm still here doing this with you two. We've only done that one. But you know, you're studying, you're preparing for meetings, you're with your staff a lot. You're trying to see the big picture of this building and all that managerial life entails. So anyway, I took that decision. I'm delighted I did because I knew I wanted to do it. And I absolutely love it. You seem to love your time at Derby. I remember the famous scenes when you beat Leeds in the playoff semi. How difficult a decision? Was it a case of Chelsea coming in? It's a no brainer. Or at the time, is it a tricky decision because of how much you enjoyed being manager of Derby? How tough was that? Yeah, that was tricky because Mel Morris gave me the opportunity. And that's never shortened me. That's amazing what he did. And I owe him forever on that. So the year I had at Derby, the work we did with the staff, the players, the buy-in, the fans. It was an incredible year. I love living up there. I love living amongst one club city, one city club, sorry, where it's everything is football. If we could have made it, if we could have had that last step, it would have been incredible. But the whole year and the backing from the fans and the feeling I had for that club was special. So Mel Morris, the owner, who was so hands on, Stephen Pearce, the chief exec, us as a staff, all the players, everyone who bought in to get so close to Wembley. And that Leeds game goes, as I say, it's in the top few games in terms of experience and feeling. And I hope Derby fans is there in their memory banks forever as well. And finally, Frank, what is your aim? What is your vision as manager of Chelsea Football Club? To keep improving and to try and make us successful. And whatever that looks like at the moment is not easy to say because the gap has obviously opened up in the league terms. Liverpool have been incredible this year. Both of them in Manchester City over the last couple of seasons last year. So we have to understand that there's a gap there that we want to close. So that's sort of stage one. Can we close that? I think there's a lot of hard work for us to do here. Everybody, myself, staff, players included, the whole club, how we move forward, because I want us to get to a point where we're competing, where we've been competing in the modern era. You know, we've had some great times here at Chelsea and at the moment, for different reasons, we're slightly short of that. But we should never lose sight of the idea of trying to close that gap. And that's my plan and my vision. First trophy you win as manager of Chelsea. Are you going to show them how to celebrate like you did in Munich? Oh, yes. Pick up the bar tab? No, no, they're not allowed to drink now. I might have a drink. Oh, yeah, I love that, just being genuine. I will pick up the bar tab. And we work all year. If you celebrate, there's nothing better than seeing the players. They're the ones that deserve it more than me if they go and win a final. So they can celebrate as much as they want. Frank, absolute pleasure. Thank you very much for your time. Lovely speaking to you, lads. That was Making It Pro with Frank Lampard in partnership with EA Sports FIFA 20.