Chelsea fire Lampard

Frank Lampard did as a coach what he did as a player.

Stand elegantly on the field, give yourself body and soul at the service of the shield, and think after receiving the ball.

His predilection for self-sacrificing, strong and obedient players, rather than those who think fast, was the first sign that his project on the Chelsea bench would suffer unstoppable deterioration in an increasingly demanding tactical competition.

A year and a half after assuming as coach

blue

, in the summer of 2019, this Monday the club of his life announced his sudden dismissal.

For weeks Chelsea has been negotiating with Thomas Tuchel, a benchmark in the contemporary German school, currently in vogue, and responsible for leading PSG to their first Champions League final last summer.

Chelsea, who visit Wanda on February 23 to play the first leg of the Champions League round of 16, had become a team in dissolution.

If he won, like this Sunday in the Cup against Luton Town (3-1), he almost never did it by controlling the matches as those teams blessed by virtuous squads are presumed to do.

A bunch of excellent players is what the club's owner, Roman Abramovich, made available to him.

This summer it made the largest investment in transfers in the world: 247 million euros, a figure that only Manchester City follows closely, which invested 170.

The contrast between the talent available and the performance offered was becoming louder every day.

Ninth place in the Premier League standings after eight games won, five tied and six lost, placed Chelsea four points behind the Champions League box, now guarded by none other than Liverpool, which is fourth.

"He who does not run will not play," warned Lampard before facing Luton, in his umpteenth accusatory speech.

Exhausted his ideas to develop the 4-3-3, the coach thought that the team's tendency to split would be solved with the physical intensity that his players refused to give him.

His last address, in the conference room at Stamford Bridge, was defined by words like "energy" and "desire", extolled as synonymous with excellence.

Desperate at the broken vision of increasingly uncoordinated lines and unable to achieve superiorities in his midfield, in the weeks leading up to his dismissal Lampard watched as Chelsea crashed into almost any defense.

The more evident the difficulties of his players became to receive the ball with time and space, the more he insisted on replacing the most lucid with the most vigorous.

Thus he preferred Ben Chilwell over Marcos Alonso;

Kovacic before Jorginho;

Mount before Kanté;

Hudson-Odoi before Ziyech;

or Giroud before Timo Werner.

Embarked on the mecca of sweat, one day Lampard discovered that he had crossed the meridian of no return.

Playing football well again seemed impossible as this generous, noble and well-intentioned man crossed his arms in the Stamford Bridge band contemplating the sad victory of his farewell, crowned by a

hat trick

from Tammy Abraham, one of the youth players he promoted.

Abramovich: "It was very difficult"

At 42, Lampard is considered a legend.

Not only at Chelsea.

The man enjoyed the support of the powerful English media machine that, thirsty for a true charismatic idol on the bench, saw in this Londoner from Havering the best exponent of the nine generation of national coaches.

The drought is long overdue.

The last English coach to lift the First Division league championship trophy was Howard Wilkinson, with Leeds, in the 1991-92 season, the terminal course before the institution of the Premier model.

Aware of the symbolic power of his most representative employee, Abramovich honored him by announcing that he was firing him.

“It was a very difficult decision for the club,” said the owner, “especially since I have an excellent personal relationship with Frank and I have the utmost respect for him.

He is a man of great integrity and possesses the highest work ethic.

In any case, under the current circumstances we believe that it is best to change managers.

Frank is an icon of the club and his status as such will remain unchanged ”.