Frank Lampard For Best Player Honours

The multi-million signings that Jose Mourinho brought in to Stanford Bridge all failed to outshine one man bought by Claudio Ranieri in their all-conquering Premiership season. Even before the arrival of Mourinho, Frank Lampard was the lynchpin of the Chelsea side that finished a credible 2nd in England and semi-finalists of Europe. A product of the West Ham youth system, Frank Lampard has never looked back when he was brought to Stanford Bridge after West Ham was relegated.

Mediocre in his days at West Ham, Frank Lampard never looked the type of player that will be consistently wearing the England shirt. He would be, at most, a '10 caps player'. He looked lightweight in the middle of the park against the Roy Keanes, Paul Inces and Vieras. Now, Frank Lampard are rubbing shoulders with the Ronaldinhos, Ballacks and Kakas. What motivated his total transformation into the world-class player he is now is still unknown. Digging into his past, he was once accused of having a sex scandal with football fans together with Kieron Dyer and another unnamed Premiership footballer. That shows how much he has moved on from then. Alan Hansen commented that he was the most improved player in English football history. English schoolboy to Midfield Mastero.

Frank Lampard is fast writing himself into Chelsea's history with their historical triumph in winning their first English league title in 50 years. The catalysts were no doubt John Terry, Claude Makelele and himself. To score 20 goals a season as a central midfielder is amazing. To play every single Premiership game at the highest level and maintain a consistently above-par and sometimes, sublime performances are even more baffling. His recent brace against Blackburn cemented him as the top-scorer of English Premiership hitherto. Frank Lampard is not as affable as Gianfranco Zola, not as charismatic as Ruud Gullit, not as influential as Gianluca Vialli. But no player in history of Chelsea or even in history has continue to score goals, provide assists, defend, run kilometres in every single game, stay injury-free with minimal discilpinary problems in the rocket-speed English football environment.

To be frank, I was waiting for Frank Lampard's unbelievable form to die down. It never happened. I was hoping that he never became the Paul Scholes of the late nineties. He probably surpassed Scholes. I was waiting for him to fumble in the big European stage when his style of play is not as expressive. He bagged a double sensational strike against mighty Bayern Munich last season. His play is direct and never fanciful. His delivery of short and long passes are dead accurate. His free-kicks are not nice to look at but he hits them with an excellent rate at the back of the net. If Ronaldinho was the Maradona of the 21st century with all his flair and unpredictability then Frank Lampard has got to be Pele. Nothing fanciful, just hell lot of efficiency.

Competing with the likes of Ronaldinho, Pavel Nedved, Kaka, Shevchenko is no mean feat, all of them are great players in their own right and are all influential and reasons for their respective teams' success but none comes close to beating injury-free Frank Lampard. Awarding the FIFA player of the Year have always been performance-based. No Englishmen nor any player from the English League has ever won it. If there's one person to nick it, its got to be Frank. He is the epiotme of professionalism and sporting excellence.