Chelsea's veteran midfielder holds Bayern Munich in high regard but believes his team can prosper in the Allianz Arena, he tells Barney Ronay
Over the past few days citizens of that stretch of Chelsea land that runs between King's Road and the manicured country retreat of Stoke D'Abernon could have been forgiven for imagining a faint rumbling noise in the air.
If there has been a mild sense of preliminary clanking, this is perhaps simply the sound of Chelsea's old guard nudging the throttle and thrumming though the gears en route to Bavaria and what will probably be the final appearance on such a stage of the greatest and most stubbornly indissoluble team in the club's history.
This is a group of players assembled with the Champions League in mind. Frank Lampard's arrival predates that of Roman Abramovich by two years but Lampard's club career has still been largely defined by the oligarch's grand Euro-centred project. Not without success, too: Lampard has perhaps been the most faithful of Chelsea's senior players to the diktats of the grand European design. If Didier Drogba enters Saturday's final at the Allianz Arena with a sense of incompleteness – red cards against Manchester United, Barcelona and Internazionale all dovetailed with decisive defeat – Lampard has often been last man standing when Chelsea needed him most, excelling even in late-stage defeat. He scored against Monaco in the 2004 semi-final. He scored in the elimination of Barcelona the next year and again at the Camp Nou as Chelsea went out in 2006. In the 2008 final in Moscow he scored an equaliser and converted his penalty in the shootout but still fell narrowly short.
Aged 33, Lampard is now facing a grand-stage swansong in a competition that has often seen the best of him. "For Chelsea it would be the greatest achievement for sure," Lampard says. "It would be a huge achievement. But I think every step has been a huge achievement – the Barcelona game and the turnaround from Napoli. It would certainly be Chelsea's best ever feat."
For Lampard, defeat of Bayern Munich would also crown a career measured out in victory podiums that would include every A-list club trophy. "If we don't win it, I'd have no regrets looking back. I'm very pleased and proud of the career I've had here. I've been very lucky to be at a great club and win a lot of things. But in terms of the full set on the table, it would be; you can't hide away from that."
Have the near misses preyed on his mind ahead of Saturday's final? "A little bit. I think about all my successes and failures and sometimes the failures stick in your head as much as the wins. But you do move on. I've got nice memories of Moscow – obviously not the ending but the occasion itself.
"Every year we get asked the same questions: 'Is this the year, how inspired are you by the failures of years before?' And every year we have failed, because we haven't done it. We are one step closer to making it."
English footballers are often accused of a kind of gilded insularity, of failing to see beyond the walls of their own self-propelling Premier League. Not so Lampard, who is able to offer his own forensic analysis of the challenge in central midfield on Saturday. "I watched [Bayern] play against Borussia Dortmund. [Luiz] Gustavo can't play but in [Toni] Kroos and [Bastian] Schweinsteiger they have two fantastic midfield players. I can't speak highly enough of them. Kroos has come on and really impressed me. And then [Thomas] Müller played behind the front man, so it depends on whether they want to be more attacking or they want to get someone in to hold. Either way it's going to be a battleground because they are very strong in there."
Blessed with a less experienced cartel of grizzled old hands there might have been a temptation for Chelsea's intensity levels to drop after the defeat of Barcelona in the semi-finals, or at least to harbour expectations of a slightly less frazzling experience in the Allianz Arena.
"It doesn't work that way," Lampard says. "We've enjoyed the feeling of beating the best because Barcelona certainly are the best team, or they have certainly been the best for a long time. But we're clever enough to know that if you lose the final people soon forget the semis and the quarters."
Plus, of course, England's sixth-best team this season must confront not only the Bundesliga runners-up but an enduring inferiority complex in knockout football, borne of successive defeats on penalties at national level, and shadowed by German football's current buoyancy.
"I have huge respect for [German footballers]," Lampard says. "I grew up being frustrated by them as an England fan. You know how tough they are in certain situations. I worked with Michael Ballack closely and he was one of those players who you could probably take the wrong way in the beginning; but he was so determined, confident and wanted to win. I think that's just a trait. The German teams I have played against all seem to have that individually."
For Lampard this season has also been a test of mental fortitude, most notably in the seasonal low point of sitting on the bench watching Chelsea lose 3-1 in Napoli shortly before the invigorating departure of André Villas-Boas. Those dark days have been followed by a resurgence so extraordinary Lampard could yet see the bleakest moment of his Chelsea career followed by a career high three months later.
"It was tough when I wasn't in the team and frustrating individually. I sat back at times and got the hump indoors, but I tried to carry on working hard and in the end it has turned around personally, but not quite to the full extent yet. If we win the final then I can probably answer that better."
It is a prospect that will also dictate the tone of Chelsea's summer. Even crouched beneath the footballing alp of Champions League success, the immediate future must be considered and defeat would mean Chelsea are excluded from the competition for the first time in the Abramovich era.
"It's in the back of our minds," Lampard admits. It seems likely Saturday night in Munich will bring either a late-blooming high, or usher in the kind of summer revamp that may finally uproot once and for all that clanking old guard. Read More
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