Читать книгу Super Frank - Portrait of a Hero - Douglas Thompson - Страница 14
Оглавление‘You try to ignore the criticism, but it can hurt. And it did.’
FRANK LAMPARD JUNIOR
When Pat Lampard used to shout ‘Frank!’, wanting to attract her son or husband around the house, the response of the two men was usually silence. She must want the other one. Pat says they both were convinced it was always the other Frank. Certainly, that is what they told her. ‘I used to ignore her and pretend it was Dad she was after. He did the same,’ said Frank Junior. It was the other shouting that got to him, though.
He was bright, he had dealt capably with his education and his future was clear to him: all he had to do was play football to the best of his ability, to learn, to improve and to go on. He had an extraordinary support system. Yet the fans were telling him to stuff it. And much, much worse besides.
When Frank Junior started with West Ham all he wanted was to be in the first team. In the middle of the night in his room at the family home in Romford, he would see himself as a star striker, as Roy of the Rovers. It was many a schoolboy’s fantasy, but for Frank when the 7am alarm went off it could become a reality.
His cousin Jamie Redknapp was establishing himself as a formidable football player. He had to keep working, just as his father kept insisting. There were other things in life than football, but then…
‘Part of the reason for the progress I have made is that I made a conscious effort when I was sixteen or seventeen that I needed to add more to my game. I could always hit the pass and be neat and tidy. But that extra bit, of scoring goals and being box to box, just gives more to your game. You realise you need that part to your game if you are going to be a complete player. I think it was probably Dad as well who drummed that into me.’
But many of the fans believed his progress, his elevation, was only because of his father. And once you pick up that particular stick it tends to grow branches.
When he made his first appearance as a substitute for West Ham in January 1996, a section of the Upton Park crowd started booing. It was hurtful and menacing and upset many of those present. What young lad needed this sort of treatment?
Certainly, the professionals saw how unpleasant and unnecessary it was; the much-liked, affable Scot Gordon Strachan, then the Coventry manager, who had brought himself on at the same time as Frank, put his arm round him to console him.
Frank was just seventeen years old and it has to rank as one of the cruellest introductions any player has undergone. Yet, his father emphasised, probably more optimistically than realistically, ‘He never let it worry him. He showed them what a terrific temperament he’s got. He took it in his stride. They thought it was nepotism, but it wasn’t. Harry and I knew what he could do. He was there on merit.’
Frank admitted, ‘I was young when I started getting all the remarks. It is hard for someone that age to take it because you have no experience. You try to ignore the criticism, but that little bit can hurt you and it did. There were boos and comments and that was disappointing. The reception I got never made me think I should leave; I was always West Ham from the start.
‘The fact was I had always been a West Ham fan and wanted to play for them, but there were comments. It might have been a good thing because it made me a stronger personality.
‘When it started I’d only just broken into the team and I still had to prove myself to them. It wasn’t easy at times and I took some stick from a few fans in the early games. I had to cope with it, but it was a big problem for me.
‘People looking in from the outside might see it as an advantage having family connections, but the stick I got when I first broke through at West Ham was disappointing to say the least.
‘I talk to people in everyday life who have dads who run their business and they realise how hard it has been for me. The only advantage was that it may have made me a stronger character. The frustration was not being able to prove yourself in an instant.
‘Before I had a chance to really produce the goods in the first team, people were very sceptical, wondering if I was only there because of the family connections. All I ever got was the accusation that I was only playing because of my dad and my uncle. I needed mental toughness because of all the things that get said when your father has a senior position at the club.
‘It would have been so easy for me to have buckled, to have run away and hidden when the stick was flying as I was struggling to get my game together.
‘I’d hear the effing and blinding from the terraces. Both at home and away. “You’re not as good as your old man.” “You’re not fit to lace his boots.”
‘It hurt. It piled on the pressure. I worked twice as hard to prove myself to the manager who picked the team – and to the fans. It’s not any fun but it makes you stronger; you want to prove them so wrong. I suppose the advantage from a young age is that people recognise you and you stand out because of your name.
‘And then there’s the disadvantage… People call you a kid at twenty, but at seventeen years old I had pretty much just come out of school and I was getting booed by grown men.
‘It’s tough for any player who is a victim of the boo-boys. It knocks at your confidence and gets under your skin. I honestly don’t think people realise what damage they can do to a player. But I know you have to be able to take it on the chin in this game and be big enough to take the flak and come back for more if necessary.’
Of course, there’s no proving them wrong without the chances to play regularly. It was Catch-22. So, as ever, he got on with it, but it was frustrating as he warmed the substitutes’ bench week after week waiting for a moment, just a moment, to prove himself in action.
And, ironically, the most vicious bile from the West Ham stands, the crescendo of booing and scathing charges that were almost impossible to accept, arose because of his desire to show the fans how much he deserved to be on the pitch. And the management’s belief that he could do it. The fans thought they knew better. The charges were of graft, of a scam – that it was just a way to make money.
Frank Senior explained, ‘A lot of it came about because Frank made a few appearances as a substitute in his first season, coming on in the last five minutes. A lot of the punters thought we were just trying to sort him out with appearance money bonuses. The reality was that the Lampards would have paid West Ham to let Frank Junior loose every moment of every game.
‘The fact is that Frank’s done it the hard way, all off his own back,’ says his father, adding, ‘He’d done it under his own steam. People forget how young he is.’
Or, more importantly, how young he was.
Nobody can contain the fans’ fury, though. Nor their fun or their superior Variety Club inventiveness. They can spot a player’s weakness before he’s even aware of it.
Frank had to endure more scurrilous personal abuse. There were the ‘Fat Frank’ jibes about his wobbly backside and the nasty ‘Poor Man’s Jamie’ (a mangle of nepotism with Harry and being a cousin of Jamie). Invective under the bridge you’d think for a veteran like Harry Redknapp, but he revealed of his management days with both Franks at West Ham. ‘I couldn’t sleep without a gulp of Night Nurse. Otherwise, even when things were going well, by one in the morning I’d be awake, my mind racing. It’s very difficult to explain. I can’t tell you how low I could get on a Saturday night. When things are bad it’s like a death in the family.
‘But the stress doesn’t come from the board. Never, ever. Or the fans. And I didn’t have problems with the players. It’s within, knowing that so many people care about the football club that you run, you’ve got all those hopes on your shoulders.’
Harry Redknapp, an ongoing if sometimes long-distance influence, with his brother-in-law, on one of England’s most important players, has a crafty Cockney image; it’s easy word processing to make him part Del Trotter with a sprinkling of George Cole’s wheeler-dealer in Minder. He’s way ahead of that game.
Harry Redknapp has the wit and intelligence and, most necessarily, the assurance to win at football which is a far more complex, entertaining and intriguing act than ducking and diving. Young Frank Lampard benefited from that, as had his father, at West Ham. But he suffered from the connection too, as Redknapp recalled in his book, ‘I was disappointed in sections of the West Ham crowd which gave him no end of stick during his early appearances. The crowd was getting at me for playing him and Frank Senior didn’t think I was playing him enough! We never fell out over it, but I was aware Frank thought I was bringing his son along too slowly. I’d been through the same situation with Jamie and I was confident I was doing what was right.’
