Sunday Mirror (Northern Ireland)
YOU’LL HAVE TO EARN RESPECT
Rodgers warns Lamps must prove himself... as the boss
BRENDAN RODGERS has warned Frank Lampard that being a top player only earns a limited amount of respect from stars who will still demand to be well coached.
Chelsea legend Lampard returned to Stamford Bridge last month to take over as boss after a glittering playing career.
He takes charge of the west London club at home for the first time today against Leicester.
Lampard, 41, landed his dream job despite just 12 months of previous coaching experience at Derby in the Championship.
Foxes boss Rodgers feels Lampard is a good fit for Chelsea, where the Leicester coach worked in the academy between 2004 and 2008.
But Rodgers, 46, admitted: “I remember being at Chelsea and the guys talking about it. If you have been a top player, you walk through the changing room and you have that respect automatically. But after a few weeks, the players won’t be looking at you the same.
“They want to know, ‘What are you going to do for me?’ – that is how the game works.
“Whatever background you come from, it is ultimately about having the respect and showing you have a value and worth to improve players.
“Frank went in at Derby where the players were maybe not quite at his level – but he still showed the empathy and made the transition to go and work with them and support them.
“Now if you have the opportunity to work with top-class players, you have a better opportunity to win trophies. Chelsea is a hard one to turn down.
“You get given the opportunity to go into a club in the top four, into a team and a group which has won the Europa League.
“I had a similar experience at Swansea, virtually only two-and-ahalf years as a manager before I went to Liverpool. Sometimes you can’t turn it down.”
However, Rodgers’ route to managing in the Premier League has been entirely different to Lampard’s.
Injury forced him to quit as a Reading player, aged just 20, and he coached the kids there before working his way up to academy director.
The Northern Irishman then went to Chelsea as their youth-team chief and later reserve boss.
Senior management subsequently beckoned at Watford, Reading and Swansea before Liverpool, Celtic and Leicester came calling for his services. But Rodgers has no complaints about former England superstars such as Lampard going straight into plum managerial jobs.
He said: “If you have played a long time and been at the top of your game, there has to be an opportunity for players to be fast-tracked.
“You still have to put the hours in and make the commitment if you are going to succeed. But there has to be an opportunity rather than starting right at the very bottom.
“I wasn’t a very good player. I loved football and felt the second best thing to playing is working and developing young players. In my 20s, I was learning about developing players, coaching methods and formulating an identity.
“By the time I became a manager at 35, I had 15 years of coaching experience from tying the bootlaces of six-year-olds to working with some of the biggest stars in the world.
“Chelsea was the real making of me in 2004. I was working with top-level young players in a world-class environment. I was there at the time in that real period of success and I got to enjoy the feeling of being in and
around real winners.”