Frank began his football career in 1995 with West Ham United, the same team that his father had played for. He made his Premier League debut a year later in 1996. In 2001, Frank signed with Chelsea and stayed with them for 13 years, making 648 appearances and becoming the club’s top scorer with 211 goals. During his playing career, Frank was named one of the best midfielders of his generation, and he began his managerial career in 2018.



In this conversation Frank and Steven discuss topics, such as:


 His father’s role in his success
 His fear of failure
  His work ethic and understanding of his weaknesses
  The coping mechanisms he has used along the way
  What it takes to be a modern manager
  Creating an environment for success
  The challengers of being a modern player
  How his mothers death impacted him
  His plans for Chelsea



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When you get that call, had you known the context, the behind the scenes, that unhealthy culture?

Honestly, do you think you would have made a different decision?

I read that your dad was the biggest influence on your career and then I read a separate quote saying sometimes I hated him.

my dad was a tough man, pushed me very hard on the football front and it got probably a bit too much.

The fear of failure was a huge driving force but it made me what I was and gave me the career I got in the end.

Chelsea fans will be listening to this because they want to get your opinion on what's just happened because since you've left we've not really heard from you.

I came back here because this was an opportunity to come to Chelsea, a club close to my heart but I could see in training the level wasn't enough.

The size of the squad with players that will test you and question you.

And then Chelsea spends more money than anyone's ever spent in a window.

You could see that the players were ready for the season to finish.

But low standards are a symptom of something further upstream that's happened.

1 moment occurred in your life that really tested you at a much deeper level.

And while you were playing at the very, very highest level.

I lost the closest person to me, you know, everything to me.

I want to say something more, you know, I couldn't.

But so much has happened in recent times in his life as a manager, that unanswered questions remain.

And I wanted to have a conversation with Frank, an honest, open conversation, to see if we could get to the bottom of some of those unanswered questions.

And how and what caused Frank to be the man that he is?

And that's maybe the most fascinating question of all.

Because there's some things that Frank has just never talked about before, but he's made the decision to talk about them today.

And if you have unanswered questions, I don't think you will at the end of this episode.

There's always a short and a long answer to that, isn't there?

I'm currently on a break, I suppose, from working, which is a pleasure in ways, because obviously the work of a manager, I was gonna say Premier League manager, but any manager in football is intense.

So at the moment I'm on a break, it's sort of holiday time for me a little bit, family time and probably when I'm out of work, I learnt this when I left Chelsea actually, it was I had a year out after that.

And I really learned to try to improve my appreciation of when you're out of work, you're fortunate enough to be able to be out of work, whatever that circumstance is, but try and enjoy your family and be very, very present.

So at the minute I'm pretty present at home, which is a good thing, hopefully for my children and wife.

I remember my brain would often drift off when I had my time out of work.

And I would think about things professionally.

So I'd think about things that I could be doing, or you think back to the past when you're when you're having those moments where you meet and your kids are running around and you have a moment where your brain drifts off to work.

What is what are the subjects that your brain starts thinking about professionally?

You think a lot in management about people.

So if I reflect on situations like leaving Chelsea or leaving Everton and those things, there are a lot of things that are out of your control.

You get to a point where you kind of can get probably

of them and lock them away and kind of go, I'm all right with that.

You know, results you can't control, but 70% you're kind of, you're okay with.

And there's 30% that you kind of niggles at you.

And a lot of those things when you become manager and maybe sort of like people things, I think there's sort of tactics and all these things are huge in a modern game.

And I'm certainly a coach, I'm not a manager, but when it comes to managing, I don't know,

players, managing a building, because you are the head of a building when you're the head coach or manager.

I think sometimes when you're reflecting, you can reflect on things.

Did I have that, was that interaction right?

And hindsight is like the best, best thing.

You know, it's so simple to sit there with hindsight and think, you know, I should have done that.

So I suppose I had moments where I go over things like that, but they're all with a yearning to sort of be a bit better or learn that you might've done something wrong or actually you come to a conclusion, no, I maybe did it right.

So, you know, I dip in and out of that stuff.

And that probably is, you know, as I say, I wouldn't say I'm the only 1, but I certainly am someone that is, you know, I can never control when those moments come.

I can be, you know, pushing the swing, you know, with my kid and then my mind goes back to something or thinks ahead to something, kind of, you know, that probably means that I'm absolutely invested in what I do.

And I also really liked your analogy of once you get to like 50, 70% peace with something, it's kind of resolved as much as you know.

And then there's other things which feel kind of unresolved, I guess.

Or there's more wisdom to garner from those experiences.

Well, I think if you don't get to peace with the 70%, I think you can get yourself in a bit of a mess.

You know, I think you can go over everything, can correct yourself.

And then what is the answer going forward?

So I think kind of understanding what you are and then going, no, no, that was fine.

Whatever the result for a win or for a loss.

I've had games as a coach and as a player where we've won a game and I know I got something wrong in the game, but you take the plaudits afterwards, but inside I know I got it wrong.

I've had games that we've lost and you get criticism from the outside.

And I know my prep was right, you know, in my head.

So I think those sorts of things, you can kind of stack up and go, no, well, that's fine.

But then there's always the 30% and we'll always strive for, and it might be less, I don't know, 30% sounds a big number when I say it, sometimes I reach 10% to try and make you as good as you can be.

So I kind of go over that stuff, because when you're out of work, when you're not working and you don't know, in football you don't know what your next gig is, you know, it's very hard to jump too far into the future because everything looks different there.

So how can you stack yourself up as good as you can now?

But I want to take a step back because I think I feel like there's more I need to understand about who you are as a person and your characters and your character and really the the like the foundations you're built upon to understand all of these things, the things we're gonna talk about.

So what do I need to know about Frank Lampard in terms of the influences and the experiences that shaped your character, the character of the man that sat in front of me.

Cause you know, I've spoken to a lot of people about you in preparation for this conversation.

No, but they all seem to sing from the exact same hymn sheet.

They all say, everyone says you're just a wonderful man, like a really good, solid gentleman.

And it's, people don't know this, but we were meant to have this conversation before.

But you've just been a total class act in even not being able to come last time because of reasons outside of your control.

The way you conduct yourself, you just conduct yourself as a real gentleman.

And then in terms of your mentality, when I was reading through your early years, it's clear that there was this real obsession to be better.

I mean, Harry said, Harry Redknapp said that you were the hardest training, hardest working person he's ever worked with when you're a young man.

Tell me, Why is Frank Lampard the way he is?

So I would call it probably a middle class upbringing in terms of my dad had been a professional footballer.

And so I went through a pretty comfortable upbringing where I was down to school every day, aspiring to do pretty well at school, training pretty much every day and playing at the weekends.

After school, we'll go and train at Tottenham and Arsenal and West Ham.

So that was on Monday night, having nets at Chelmsford.

And then on Saturday I went to school because we were in a school on Saturdays, which I was devastated with at the time, as we

So my week was so busy, but it was content, very content.

In terms of relationship of my family, I had a dad who was pushing me very hard on the football front, very, very hard.

That means that probably when I was, probably started kicking the ball when I was like 4 or maybe it seems like a walk, but you know, like remembering my early days would be 4 or 5.

And then, so that was me in terms of, I loved the football, but probably by the time I was 8 or 9, I was probably getting like coached or pushed in what a 15 or 16 year old might be when they're sort of going into an academy at West Ham, say where I ended up.

As in work on your weaknesses, go over the park.

So I was like, used to put down the cushions in the front room and have me doing reaction for our ball against the 1 reaction jump.

I'm a kid, I loved it, don't get me wrong, but there were times when I didn't love it and it got probably a bit too much.

I'm not gonna cry about it because it made me what I was and gave me the career I got in the end.

And then on the other flip of that, so I had that pushy kind of thing.

And so after a game on a Sunday, we would lose and I would get, he would give me some criticism on the way home and I would be a bit emotional.

And fortunately for me, when I think about sort of fate and how things work together to maybe get you to where you got, you end up being, my mother was the flip, the emotional support, the, you know, arm around you, the quiet word.

I was a mummy's boy and that was completely my upbringing.

And in the end it led to me leaving school with my GCSEs, getting decent grades and then going to sign on as a YTS at the time, an apprentice at West Ham.

I think it was in the Independent that your dad was the biggest influence on your career.

And then I read a separate quote saying that I have an awful lot to thank him for, but sometimes I hated him.

I think you'll probably find it a lot in stories similar to mine.

And in the modern day, I think it's changed because I think parents now, the thing with my story then in a different era was it felt pretty organic.

He saw probably a bit of talent in me and pushed and drove in an old school way.

And it was like, I think he found a new sense of pride in pushing me there.

Now I think some parents get excited about all the bright lights that may be and they push their children.

And I think that's another story, but I think mine was real.

You know, my dad was a tough man, is a tough man.

And he pushed me and I remember being over a park and it was raining and it was crossing balls for me to head.

Heading's never been a strength of mine, then and now, so it never, throughout my career.

And I couldn't, you know, I couldn't connect.

I was missing them and he was shouting at me and I remember sort of stomping off and being emotional about it.

And again, they were the building blocks of myself as a person.

It's just a reality of what I went through.

As I said, I had a lot of other comforts, so I, you know, other people don't have it as good.

And it was without that, who knows, in a football sense, if I'd have got to where I got.

And how does that, What relationship does that make you have with your work and progress and self-improvement at that very young age?

Because you signed at West Ham when you were what, 14 years old-ish?

I said, I read that Harry Redknapp quote that you outworked everybody else.

What is your relationship with your work from that very young age?

Well, I'm sort of really interested in this kind of nature versus nurture thing.

What was in me already was ingrained in me maybe to be this kind of very work ethically kind of person.

I do cheeks, curtains as you had in those days.

And I remember like, I know I needed to get fitter and get stronger.

So, and then being pushed by my dad, particularly and encouraged by my mom probably gave me this real desire to, and an understanding that if you don't work you're not gonna get there.

And that, you know, that's what I would try and pass on to my children now.

So by the time of being, you know, 16, as I remember it probably being at West Ham my early years, I'd probably been forced into a bit by my dad, but I took it on board.

So he put me in running spikes and I had to run after training, go and run over the back.

And I used to hide my spikes, go out the back.

So I didn't want the other players to see me because I felt embarrassed.

I would do everything I could to improve.

And it probably was looking back, a desire to be the best.

I was probably like the second or third best kid in pretty much every team that I played in, in whatever I did, cricket or football.

But I had a real desire to, and I also had a fear of failure.

And as much as that doesn't sound like a nice driving force, it can be a really strong driving force, I think.

Where did that fear of failure come from?

It was in my footballing career and it carried on throughout, probably still in my management career.

It can probably be the flip of that in my life because if I fear of failing something, I won't approach it.

You know, my wife will always, Christine jokes with me when we go on holiday and you want to paddleboard or something, I'm like, I'm not going near that because I know I'm going to fall off a lot, you know?

So I'm like, you paddleboard, I'll lay on the beach or I'll lay on the lilo or something like that.

But in the biggest sense in my life, you know, that fear of failure is, and it can probably maybe make me not try things I should do, but in terms of my footballing career, the fear of failure was a huge driving force.

And I don't think it's a bad thing because I think there's a certain humility to it.

And my mum would certainly have been the driver of me as a young person to say, stay humble, son, stay humble, never get too high, stay there and you'll be fine in your own head.

So I think I had a real understanding of my weaknesses and I thought, well, if I can work on these constantly, and then I started to see results really step by step.

Sometimes you go back, you go forward a few, but I can certainly say looking back at my career from start to finish, I didn't leave anything on the table in terms of work ethic and training.

You know, I don't want to sound like an absolute machine.

There'll be days when you get older, where you come off it a bit, or you start to find life affection different ways.

But when I look at my peers in football, I certainly had a training ethic that at least right at the top where the others can say the same maybe, but I felt that.

He says that during his career, he never met anyone that trained as hard as Frank.

He would be out there on a winter's day practicing, shooting for hours, left foot, right foot, et cetera, et cetera.

That fear of failure though, I can see how it becomes a driving force and makes you stay out there on a winter's day, left foot, right foot, and then leaving no stone unturned.

But with all these things, there comes a more, a cost on the other side of the coin, right?

I mean, you talked about the paddleboard thing, which is that like kind of, if I don't do it, then I won't fail.

But 1 of the things that I was assuming is that it would also make you quite a chronic overthinker.

Because I think people that have that fear of failure, they try and think their way through a situation before it happens.

Typically, what is the cost of having that fear of failure?

Well, the overthinking thing is maybe a cost.

And I think that can be a positive too, but I think it can be quite taxing on yourself, for anyone who thinks like that.

And, you know, sometimes I would, I've tried to make myself, you know, not an overthinker, however you do that.

I don't know, because I've not found a solution to that 1, because, um, I think when it's, when you are that, um, it's in you.

So, um, probably the, the, the, the negative or downsides have been probably a bit taxing on myself, but I think you learn to live with that too.

I think it's something that I'll never master and It can probably cause you into over-complicating situations, like you're saying about, I don't wanna get into that, but if you do get into something and you really overthink it and you have to get into something, I now try and step back and simplify it and say, stop overthinking it, simplify it, because for me, anything in life, if you can simplify the basics, you probably get quicker to the solution.

So that one's just a struggle that I put up with.

But as I say, I think it's just part of my makeup.

If I wasn't an overthinker, if I didn't have that sort of obsessive, sort of perfectionist training drive, I wouldn't have got to where I got to because I was not Lionel Messi, who has got this God-given talent that's there.

Wherever my talent was on the spectrum, I needed to push it and I constantly tried to.

How do you enjoy the process if you're overthinking?

I weirdly like, I've really grown to like the stress of what it brings.

And that's, you might start thinking I'm a strange person.

I don't know, but I loved stressful training, you know, to put it on a physical side, for instance, I loved like that feeling of like almost feeling sick on a preseason run or, you know, really intense training sessions.

Maybe not always in the moment, but you know, when you get to the end of it and you go, I got through that and that was so intense and hard.

And maybe in life sometimes I set myself challenges and maybe I make it more complicated than I should, but I don't mind that stuff.

And that's probably when I started off talking about that relax when you're with your children.

And I think probably a lot of people are, I don't know.

I think being overthink is not something unique to me.

It's completely everywhere, But I don't know what else to say and that's what I am.

That enjoying the pain, like the preseason run, if you feel sick, then you feel good about yourself.

I mean, I went to the gym this morning and I really didn't want to go and I bought the dog and the time limits getting shorter.

I was like, I'm gonna go in, I don't wanna go, but I'm gonna go in so I know the buzz that I'll get off afterwards.

And, you know, it probably starts from all those early days of, you know, you must work hard, you must push yourself.

And it's probably a bit of a lifer for me.

But I do, thankfully, I enjoy the stress of hard work and physical, but less now I've finished.

Now it's more to not get too unhealthy and I'm fit.

Whereas when I was training and playing, even when I finished playing for a couple of years, if I went for a 5K, I need to beat my 5K PB.

Now, when I do a 5K, I'm just gonna complete it.

Do you know what I'm completing in like 20 or 30 seconds less.

So I've dropped that 1 slightly and maybe I transfer into other parts of my life, I guess.

Quick 1 before we get back to this episode, just give me 30 seconds of your time.

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When you finished your footballing career, you know, there's many options you had.

I mean, I'm just talking about the typical path that footballers, sometimes they just go into business.

A few of them go into coaching and stay in football, but you made the decision to stay in football.

And was there anything else that was tempting you?

Well, I did punditry for a year, so I spent a year working mainly on BT and doing some different things, BBC.

I did a few bits and I really enjoyed it.

I was working a lot with Riyad Ferdinand, Steven Gerrard, Jake Humphrey, he had them recently and just really good people.

And it was like a step in the game and a step I've retired so I can do other stuff.

The life of a pundit is much easier than a manager.

So I kind of put my eggs in both baskets at that point.

I did that and I did my coaching badges and I wanted to kind of see how I felt a little bit and I didn't want to be a manager in my twenties.

When I got to my thirties, I was like, that's interesting people, managers, what are they dealing with?

I just thought about myself in my twenties more.

See all The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett transcripts on Applepodcasts

E264: Frank Lampard Finally Speaks Out About What REALLY Happened At Chelsea & Everton