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Super Frank Lampard is back, leading NYCFC to MLS title charge

By on July 12, 2016

The English press pounced on Frank Lampard’s inauspicious start to his Major League Soccer career with New York City FC, but after a string of injuries, good ole’ Super Frank is finally back.

Frank Lampard or Steven Gerrard? It’s a question that divided opinion throughout the player’s enduring careers in English football. The central attacking midfielders were the two midfield figureheads of a generation for England, taking parallel career paths at both the club and international level. There was little to separate the two players’ quality on the pitch and their rivalry essentially boiled down to club allegiances: Gerrard’s Liverpool versus Lampard’s Chelsea.

Last summer, they both left the Premier League at the same time to continue their rivalry across the pond in Major League Soccer.

Gerrard joined the LA Galaxy, MLS’ winningest team that started the wave of former English greats joining the league with their famous signing of David Beckham in 2007. The Galaxy were well prepared to welcome another star into their ranks and Gerrard, after a brief transition period, quickly settled into his new environs.

By contrast, Lampard was cast as a villain before he even stepped foot on the pitch in the United States. He signed for the brand-new franchise New York City FC, who, by contrast to Gerrard at the Galaxy, were awkward in their introduction of the star, leaving the player to remain at Manchester City beyond early expectations. Through a well-documented series of bad PR decisions and injuries, Lampard’s was essentially a story of how not to introduce a star player to Major League Soccer.

NYCFC’s handling of the situation made them prey of the English media, ready to pounce on what they perceived as an immediate failure.

On the pitch, though, Lampard is slowly piecing back together his NYCFC and MLS reputations. His playing time has been seriously hindered by lasting injuries but he has impressed when fit.

“[It’s been] very frustrating,” he told ESPN FC. “I’m a terrible injured person anyway. I’ve always found it difficult to be away from the team. You don’t feel like you’re part of it. You train separately, you have treatments on your own, and more than anything you want to take part in match day, which you have to sit out. That’s been hard.

“I’ve certainly enjoyed outside of the pitch. Moving over here, the city has been great to me. The only thing that’s been missing is being able to play and hopefully, help us win games.”

He scored three goals in ten appearances last season, including an incredible strike forty-eight seconds into New York’s victory over DC United, and despite missing the first few months of this current season, Lampard now has four goals in five starts — more, in fact, than Gerrard.

Since his thirty-eighth birthday, Lampard can’t stop scoring. Under the leadership of Patrick Vieira, NYCFC are top of the Eastern Conference and have recovered remarkably well from a 7-0 slap-down from crosstown rival New York Red Bulls earlier in the summer (in which Lampard was booed by his own fans) with Designated Players David Villa and Super Frank at the heart of it all.

Lampard might be a terrible injured person but over the past few weeks, he has reminded us that he still has a knack for this soccer thing.

Homepage photo credit: thearcticblues [CC BY 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons

About Alex Morgan

Alex Morgan, founder of Football Every Day, lives and breaths football from the West Coast of the United States in California. Aside from founding Football Every Day in January of 2013, Alex has also launched his own journalism career and hopes to help others do the same with FBED. He covers the San Jose Earthquakes as a beat reporter for QuakesTalk.com and his work has also been featured in the BBC's Match of the Day Magazine.