Frank Lampard is diving headlong into the challenges he’ll be facing as a member of New York City FC, who will be playing their inaugural Major League Soccer season in 2015. And he doesn’t expect it to be easy.
Frank Lampard not going from Chelsea to NYCFC in order to ‘relax on a beach’
Midfielder has a slightly different take on MLS than former teammate Ashley Cole.
Michael Regan
“I’m certainly not ready to relax on a beach,” Lampard said, refuting Ashley Cole’s reasoning for skipping MLS and accepting an offer from AS Roma. “I honestly think MLS is very competitive, it’s great exposure, it’s being watched. The quality of player is already here and the arrivals are only going to make it stronger.
“I’m not the kind of man who comes to sit on a beach; I can sit on a beach in 5 or 10 years’ time. I’m here to try to play good football, to try to help this new team be a successful and strong unit and help the club go forward. That’s a huge challenge to me and certainly not laying on the beach.”
Lampard did admit that he had considered overtures from the LA Galaxy in past seasons, but that he had not been quite ready to leave Chelsea. He also insisted that the level of play in MLS has only gotten better since that time.
"The progress I've seen is a great one," he said. "From the days of David Beckham, the league has grown and players are interested in coming over. That's why I'm so interested in coming out here to play. You already have a lot of respect from around the world and I imagine it will be even more by 2015 when we start to play."
It’s this kind of attitude that apparently convinced NYCFC head coach Jason Kreis that Lampard was the kind of player he wanted to build around.
“Frank’s ability is unargumentable,” Kreis said during Thursday’s conference call with reporters. “He’s proven at all different levels what he’s capable of on the soccer pitch. What he’ll be capable of for us as far as team building and leadership were the things we were most considering right now. We’re extremely pleased that he represents all those things we’re looking for in not only players, but the most important players on our team.”
Although the level of star power will be very different on NYCFC than it was on Kreis' Real Salt Lake teams, he insisted one thing that made Lampard was attractive was his ability to fit into a similar philosophical foundation.
“The team will always be the most important thing,” Kreis said. “Yes, we’re going to have some fantastic players with some incredible names like Frank Lampard, but the team always needs to be the most important thing. What we need all the players and all the staff to recognize is that the team is always more important than any individual.”
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