Super Frank Lampard was the player Steven Gerrard could have been

“To make things happen, Frank. Shout for the ball every time you’re near it, and make things happen. Only then will people say, ‘Frank Lampard won the game for us.’”

– Frank Lampard Senior to his eight-year-old son, from Totally Frank.

An entire generation’s imagination was captured in 1954: perhaps no work of literature did more to lend itself to the national identity, and what a British footballer should be than a comic strip did. Roy of the Rovers, appearing on cereal boxes, and Saturday supplements across the country, a solid 12 years before England won their solitary World Cup, followed the heroics of Roy Race of Melchester Rovers, the first fictional footballing all-purpose, heavy-duty superstar. If the name sounds familiar, it should: the “real ‘Roy of the Rovers’ stuff” is a common stock expression used by hackneyed commentators to describe lion-hearted actions of a player that defies insurmountable odds single-handedly, in reference to the overly-dramatic storylines that were often the strip’s trademark.

The last print run of the strip on Fleetway magazine is dated 1995. Around the same time, an 18-year-old was blowing his cheeks out into his cupped palms in nervous anticipation, before his number went up on the substitution board for the very first time. The West Ham debutant came on for John Moncur on January 31, 1996, vs Coventry City. Roy Race came charging out of the 10x14-inch panels and onto the 45m x 90m chalk-drawn panels of a football pitch, and his name was Frank Lampard Junior.

The problem with writing a tribute for a player like Frank Lampard is that there is very little that hasn’t been said. Since he’s a modern footballer, it’s imperative that a benchmark is set to give context to his qualities and what made him what he is, by drawing a measured comparison with a contemporary in the role that he revelled in. Unbegrudgingly, that man has to be his doppelganger in red, his England compatriot, Liverpool’s Steven Gerrard.

Lampard and Gerrard, both, lived by the same decree, both living, breathing incarnations of the Roy of the Rovers – lightning rods for grit, gallantry, last-gasp goals, and the occasional red card; yet only one garnered as much gold and glory. This discrepancy can be better understood by not debating their ability, but by the virtue of the people they are, and ultimately, their unique circumstances.

Formative years

Frank Lampard’s earliest footballing memory has him kicking balls into his granddad’s bird cage with his elder cousin in his uncle’s back-garden. Occasionally, Bobby Moore used to drop by the Lampard residence for a cuppa and a chat. “It never occurred to me,” Lampard confessed, “that the man who lifted the World Cup as captain of England was sitting on my couch.”

Football was his birthright. His father, Frank Lampard Senior, a self-styled take-no-prisoner defensive stalwart for West Ham, made sure of the fact by testing his 13-year-old son’s skills and sense of self-preservation, with one-on-one, gruelling private training sessions, with clattering tackles ringing across the local parks of Essex, being as much of the ambience as birds chirping in the trees.

His uncle, the one whose garden he used to play kickabout in, was the one to hand him his professional debut. Uncle Harry Redknapp, then-West Ham manager, famously put his arms around Coventry’s hard-as-tacks veteran Gordon Strachan who was about to come on with his debutant nephew, and appealed to the Scotsman to go easy on him, to the delight of Frank Lampard Senior, West Ham assistant manager at the time, looking on from the dugout.

Gerrard’s formative years in football were not nearly as sheltered. His childhood was chiselled in the unforgiving concrete lots of working-class Huyton, Merseyside. Aged nine, playing along Ironside road, he was nearly amputated by a freak accident. “Even now, I shudder at the memory of what took place on a patch of grass near my house,” Gerrard recounts in My Autobiography. “It was a mess. The type of place where people threw their rubbish without a second thought. Some nugget tossed this rusty fork (rake) away, I felt the prong go in, burrowing into the bone. I’ve had smashed metatarsals, but I’ve never felt pain like this.”

Huyton bred hellhounds – Joey Barton, Tony Hibbert, Steve McMahon, to name a few. A good touch and a mean streak were needed to survive. Gerrard, upon recovering, promptly developed both, going in blow to blow, paying back tackles in kind, with kids twice his age and size. “I was put on this earth to steam into tackles, stated Gerrard in his autobiography. “For most professionals, tackling is a technique. For me, it’s an adrenaline rush … the sight of the other team with the ball makes me sick … I have to claim it back. It’s my ball, and I’m going for it. Tackling is a collision which sorts out the cowards from the brave.”

It has always been a case of him against the odds and it was from this he has drawn his stubborn attitude towards the tackling and his Arnold Schwarzenegger in Collateral Damage themed playing style, which for the most part had made him a one-man-army in his prime, and perhaps the most influential player in the world, in the estimation of Zinedine Zidane.

Understated leader

Frank Lampard is the understated leader: nothing quite highlights that fact than the Champions League semi-final against Steven Gerrard’s Liverpool in 2008. With both legs finishing at 1-1, the match went into extra-time. Michael Ballack was tripped by Sami Hyypia in the box and the appeals for penalty was given. Didier Drogba and Michael Ballack offered to step up for a grieving Frank Lampard whose mother, Pat, passed away. Lampard, being who he is, bludgeoned the ball past Pepe Reina to book Chelsea a Champions league final slot.

It’d be remiss to suggest, though, that Lampard hadn’t had his early challenges. Tony Carr, under whose supervision Lampard prospered in the West Ham academy, was quoted in The Guardian saying, “When Frank was a youngster, I can remember a lot of people saying: ‘What’s all the fuss? He’s a good player but he isn’t that good.’ He never got to play for England schoolboys and I can remember Harry Redknapp, the West Ham manager, asking me why Frank wasn’t playing for England youth, when he was a youth-team player at the club.

“Harry rang the England coach, who was Dave Burnside, and Dave said: ‘We know about him but we think we’ve got better.’ That sort of thing was a fantastic spur for Frank. With his bloody‑mindedness, his dedication, the way he constantly tried to improve himself – he made himself the ultimate pro. I’ve got nothing but complete admiration for him.”

Gerrard teetered and tottered between an induced state of self-belief and an underlying impostor syndrome in his early England days, something that has stemmed from his relative lower-middle-class hand-me-downs to riches story arc. “I’m shitting myself here, mate,” were his exact words to Didi Hamann, on his debut versus Germany in 2001, before unwittingly mowing down his Liverpool teammate with a mistimed tackle.

When Lampard went onto make his debut for England, lining up with his kick-the-ball-in-the-bird-cage partner Jamie Redknapp, it came as little surprise. To Lampard, perhaps, the inevitability of the event was something as routine as a studious student getting good grades in the GCSEs. Which, in fact, he did.

Mind over matter

It may come as a surprise to know that Frank Lampard recorded one of Britain’s highest Mensa scores. It may not be a surprise for Chelsea fans who have witnessed the intelligence of his late runs into the box, which has made him an expert marksman, scoring 177 goals in the Premier League, a feat unheard of for a midfielder. The figure is only bettered by Wayne Rooney, Alan Shearer and Andy Cole, all of whom are strikers.

In his teenage years, he attended private school, playing matches over at high-brow, hyper-intellectual institutions such as Eton on a regular basis. That experience rubbed off on him, as he received a starred A in Latin in his GCSEs. Gerrard on the other hand, spent his last exam in Liverpool wondering, “exactly how I would burn my uniform.” This is not a slight on the Liverpool’s legend’s intelligence, (Gerrard has a remarkable 120 goals in the Premier League) but an observation of their approach and predisposition to newer ideas. The following paragraphs will elaborate how that plays into a footballing scenario.

Jaime Carragher, in his autobiography, Carra, recalls how the very first time Rafael Benitez met Steven Gerrard in a pre-match tactical meeting, he offered, “I’ve watched your games on video. Your problem is that you run around too much.” Carragher noted Gerrard being visibly deflated by that constructive criticism. It was a moment of existential crisis for Gerrard after that interaction. After all, that’s what he’s renowned for.

Guus Hiddink states in Football Men how in his time as Chelsea’s interim manager in 2009, Lampard was a bit more perceptive to the suggestion, to which Lampard replied, “Oh, yes. Yes, yes! I haven’t really thought about that.”

The premise of the argument was to build the play up towards the respective players, restricting the bustling box-to-box midfielders to a more effective zone, namely, in front of the box, where they could be most lethal, on and off the ball, functioning as an unceasing battering ram in a siege.

Lampard’s 102 assists to complement his astounding goal tally, compared to Gerrard’s 92, would suggest perhaps Lampard adhered to his zone better. However, those figures are subjective and is infinitely dependent on the regularity of their presence on the football pitch and most tellingly, the teammates around them, which dictates tactics, positioning, and the quality of support and supply. Lampard seemed to have a better deal in all of these departments.

A question of loyalty

One must wonder what must have happened if Gerrard did move to Chelsea riding on the wind of his epic Champions League win, inspiring his unfancied Liverpool side from 0-3 down to 3-3, and then bagging the trophy on penalties, versus star-studded AC Milan in 2005. He, certainly, would have won more trophies, for starters. But that wouldn’t have been all.

The tenet that held Frank Lampard together was his economy of movement. Both the players started off in the high-octane style, revving through defences that made the crowd purr, getting at the end of their own passes, but one was allowed more time to cool down than the other and preserve himself.

Lampard’s run of 164 competitive games in the top flight is a testament to his fitness as much as it is to Chelsea’s squad depth and quality. With the cover of Claude Makelele, Geremi, Michael Ballack, Michael Essien, Ramires, Lampard rarely had to stray from his attacking zone, whereas Gerrard found himself constantly over-extending his role, tirelessly tracking back, bailing his team out in defensive positions before and after the one truly world—class midfield pairing of Xabi Alonso and Javier Mascherano sought pastures new.

The collective competence, talent, resilience (or lack) of Igor Biscan, Jay Spearing, Alberto Aquilani, etc and Liverpool’s transfer committee aged him with heartburn, over-exertion, and did little for his consistent groin injuries, recovery time, and left him bereft of trophies he should have won. It’s little wonder why Gerrard, who made his debut in 1998 versus Blackburn, being two years younger, retired earlier than Lampard did.

A passage from Football Men concerning Lampard’s regard for fan opinion reads: “Lampard as a teenager at West Ham gets weekly abuse from thousands of fans, after his uncle and father lose popularity. When the eighteen-year-old is carried off badly hurt on a stretcher at Villa Park, some West Ham supporters in the away section cheer. Lampard dreads driving to his home ground on matchdays. ‘There wasn’t a single time that I left Upton Park after being slagged off or jeered by some of the supporters that I didn’t take their anger home with me,’ he admits. ‘These punters had so many hang-ups about me that I began to wonder if the torrents of abuse I received were actually some amateur attempt at collective therapy.’ They probably were. That his father played over seven hundred games for West Ham doesn’t give the fans pause.”

Frank Lampard was pilloried for controversially featuring for direct rivals Manchester City in 2014-’15. Lampard’s stance on loyalty was informed at a young age, therefore attuned with reality, is practical and consequently more rewarding than Gerrard’s – but what can you expect from a romantic whose opening lines in his autobiography reads, “cut my veins open and I bleed Liverpool red”?

Epilogue

Exhibitionists of the full-blooded tackle, the Hollywood pass and the howitzer shot. Both manifestations of defiance, drive and physical courage. Barrel-chested Hercules among men, near-complete footballers, both, but ultimately, different people.

Gerrard, in a way, chose to not be as successful as he should have been, owing to his unwavering allegiance, and wringed his best years for his boyhood club. He may have been more talented, and won games more spectacularly than most in modern football; but Super Frankie Lampard won more games.

Srijandeep Das is the Chief Editor of Football Paradise - the winner of the prestigious Judges’ Choice Award at the International Football Blogging Awards 2016, at Manchester United’s Old Trafford stadium. He tweets @srijandeep.