On May 11th 2013 Frank Lampard scored his 203rd goal for Chelsea, breaking the club goalscoring record.
On may 16th the BBC (amongst others) reported that Frank Lampard signed a new one year contract with Chelsea.
The new contract is bad news for the future of English football.
Lampard is focusing on his playing career. The desire to play more games for Chelsea, to score more goals for Chelsea, to win more trophies for Chelsea. He is not focusing on his long term future.
That future could be be as a top level manager/coach. There are some key indicators in that direction.
One is his reportedly high IQ. Four years ago Chelsea tested their squad to determine their intelligence. Reports suggested that Lampard scored over 150, putting him in the top 0.1 per cent of the population. His score was higher than the Dr performing the testing.
He is often described as an intelligent player. His use of space and ability to find it in a crowded penalty area has long been a hallmark of his play. Indeed spacial awareness plays a large role in IQ testing. There can be little doubt that being highly intelligent is an advantage to the modern manager.
The second is more pertinent when combined with the first. It relies on ‘The Michelangelo System’ as described by Daniel Coyle in his book ‘The Talent Code’, drawing on the works S R Epstein, Andrew Landis, Carolyn S Wood, Charles Nicholl and others.
The Renaissance period is renowned as a time of great creativity and artistry centering around Florence from 1440 to 1490. Coyle suggests that this was not mere good fortune but a result of an extraordinary ability to develop talent. The system relied upon apprenticeships within the well established craft guilds. An aspiring artist would study under an established artist, who had previously studied and another artist and so forth, creating a lineage of excellence. The chain ran something like this – da Vinci studied under Verrochio, Verrochio studied under Donatello, Donatello studied under Ghiberti, Michelangelo studied under Ghirlandio, Ghirlandio studied under Baldovinetti and so the line continues.
Taking the case of Michelangelo, he lived with a stone cutter from the age of six to ten. Then apprenticed under Ghirlandio where he was involved in sketching, copying and preparing frescoes in Florence before being taught by the sculptor Bertoldo and tutored by others at the home of Lorenzo de Medici, who ruled Florence during the period. At twenty four Michelangelo produced his first great work the Pieta and it was hailed as pure genius, but Michelangelo acknowledged that it was the product of many years of hard work. “If people knew how hard I had to work to gain my mastery it would not seem so wonderful at all”.
Daniel Coyle uses the Renaissance line to emphasise the importance of deep practice to reach a high degree of excellence. However, the line of high quality mentoring leading to mastery is the aspect to apply to Lampard.
The idea does not only apply to art. Indeed if you consider the classic Greek philosophers, Socrates, Plato and Aristotle they are closely linked, with Plato effectively being Socrates biographer and Aristotle studying at Plato’s academy before founding his own school. In music, Mozart’s father was a composer and he was of the Vienna school in late 18th century which also included Beethoven and Haydn. The idea of a lineage of mentors and contemporaries is an enticing idea.
How does this relate to Frank Lampard? Let’s take the case of Michelangelo growing up. He grew up in the environment of a sculptor. The Lampard family cannot have been anything other than a football environment. His father Frank Lampard Sr played over 500 times for West Ham and his uncle Harry Redknapp had a successful playing career most notably with West Ham and Bournemouth. It wasn’t nepotism that made Frank Jr and Jamie Redknapp professional footballers, it was an inevitability. Frank Sr became assistant manager at West Ham while Harry Redknapp has been one of the best English managers for two decades. Is it also inevitable that Frank Jr becomes a manager/coach?
So, his early years and family life are suggestive that a career within football off the pitch is on the cards. What about his mentors? Who has guided his playing career from the sidelines?
Lampard began at West Ham, a product of the youth academy that produced Rio Ferdinand, Joe Cole, Frank Lampard, Glen Johnson, Jermaine Defoe and many others. This academy has been managed by Tony Carr since 1973. Lampard’s first mentor outside of the family unit. The first manager at West Ham retained the family connection in uncle Harry. The lineage really branches out once Lampard leaves for Chelsea in 2001.
Claudio Ranieri signed Lampard. Ranieri came to Chelsea having taken Valencia to a Champions League final. When Ranieri departed in 2004, Jose Mourinho arrived. The litanyof managers since Mourinho reads thus – Avram Grant, Felipe Scolari, Guus Hiddink, Carlo Ancelotti, Andre Vilas Boas, Roberto di Matteo and Rafa Benitez. Add to this list of mentors the international managers Lampard has played under – Kevin Keegan, Sven Goran Eriksson, Steve McLaren, Fabio Capello and Roy Hodgson.
The weight of trophies and experience of those managers is immense. One would assume that someone with the intelligence and background of Frank Lampard would learn something from each of them. If you apply the Michelangelo system to this then the path to mastery is well sign posted. Even before taking into account who the mentors of Lampard’s mentors (Sir Bobby Robson, Sir Alf Ramsey, Arrigo Saachi, Bill Shankly, Bob Paisley, Sir Alex Ferguson) the sum of knowledge is vast.
For the idea of a Michelangelo system to apply to football it can not merely apply to one player. There is evidence that it is in place already when you consider the number of former Liverpool and Manchester United players who have gone on from working with Paisley, Shankly and Ferguson into high level management. Indeed looking at Brendan Rodgers and Andre Vilas Boas, Jose Mourinho seems to have taken notice of the way Bobby Robson mentored him and passed it on to his coaches.
Which brings us back to Frank Lampard. His contract with Chelsea is great news for his playing career. Great news for Chelsea FC. A missed opportunity for Frank himself. Should he follow the Michelangelo and fulfill the potential to be a manager or coach, the moment he signed the contract extension is a missed opportunity. It represents the loss of a chance to move to another nation and sample a different footballing ideology. Paul Lambert gained valuable experience in Germany. David Platt spent much time in Italy before traveling and watching coaching sessions around Europe, as did Brendan Rodgers. Instead, he will have a period of repetition with Jose Mourinho. What might Lampard have picked up in Spain, Italy or Germany? The secrets of the Milan lab? The inner working of la Masia? Of course there are documents available on these but reading about something cannot enrich in the way that living it can. How much benefit could the transference of that knowledge from someone with almost 100 England caps, over 200 goals for Chelsea, all the winners medals any one could wish for, be? Lampard’s standing in the game is such that he will not be struggling to get people to listen to him. Lampard may yet take the Platt and Rodgers route and gather the extra knowledge, but if he doesn’t, the chance has been missed and the contract would indeed have been bad for the future of English football.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/22548313
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/celebritynews/4940708/Frank-Lampard-has-higher-IQ-than-Carol-Vorderman.html
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/sport/football/4947332/Jose-Mourinho-is-Chelseas-new-boss-and-thats-official.html