Frank Lampard on Managerial Influence: Mourinho and Ancelotti
Frank Lampard leans back in his chair and smiles. Ask him who shaped him as a manager and two names arrive instantly: Jose Mourinho and Carlo Ancelotti. Two giants, two extremes – and, these days, the two poles of his own managerial compass.
“Jose and Carlo are like both sides of the coin,” the Coventry City boss tells BBC Sport in the second episode of The Football Interview, airing on BBC One at 12:45 on Saturday and on BBC iPlayer, BBC Football YouTube and the BBC Sport website and app.
“Jose was very on you, he transmitted his self-confidence, but if you stepped out of line or did something wrong, you'd feel the strength of him, whereas Carlo was chilled and calm. When you look back, you go, 'that's a nice environment to work in'. It felt like he trusted you. So I try and take little snippets. I'm probably somewhere in the middle.”
He knows both sides well. Lampard played under Mourinho and Ancelotti at Chelsea, winning Premier League titles and FA Cups with each of them. Eight years into his own coaching career, he is still stitching together their influence as he prepares Coventry for life back in the Premier League for the first time in 25 years.
“I start to sometimes go towards being Jose, sometimes I go and be a bit more Carlo,” he admits.
The balance has taken time. At Derby in 2018, the rookie manager drove the club to the Championship play-off final, only to fall short against Aston Villa. At Chelsea, his first Premier League job as a coach lasted 18 months before he was sacked in January 2021. Everton ended even more abruptly – gone before the year was out, dismissed in January 2023.
Those years hardened him. They also changed how he handles players.
“I've learnt that young managers, you come in and feel like you have to criticise a bad performance or say something about an individual that turns up late,” he says. “The more I've done this job, I realise that they're all humans.
“Sometimes a lad comes in late, you don't know the back story. And so trying to jump on him and being this hard man manager, you've got to be more Carlo. But then if you're a bit more relaxed sometimes and people are on the pitch, not doing their job, sometimes you've got a bit more Jose.”
From mixed spells to a 95-point statement
Coventry’s return to the top flight is the chapter that has started to reframe Lampard’s managerial story.
He took over in November 2024, walked into a club scarred by years of turbulence, and led them to the Championship title with 95 points. The Sky Blues surged, not just promoted but champions, and a fanbase that had waited a quarter of a century for Premier League football finally had its moment.
For Lampard, who as a player lifted three Premier League titles, the Champions League in 2012, four FA Cups, two League Cups and the Europa League, that promotion sits surprisingly high on his personal honours list.
“When you get promoted, it's hard to balance against winning the Champions League with Chelsea,” he reflects. “Winning in Munich was the best footballing night of my life as a player by far.
“But then when you do something with a club that's been through what it's been through, when you work with a group of lads that are so great as a dressing room - I've never experienced, especially as a coach, to have such a good group.
“When we got promoted against Blackburn, I had a rush of pure emotion, it all came on top of me. It certainly goes right up there in things I've managed to achieve.”
Doubters, drive and the Premier League reality
The noise around Lampard has never really gone away. As a player, as a young coach at Derby, as the club legend returning to Chelsea, as the firefighter at Everton – the scrutiny followed every step.
Now, having dragged Coventry back into the elite, he insists he cannot let the outside world dictate his work.
“The thing about modern-day football – you're brilliant one minute, you might not be brilliant the next and then everyone will let you know that,” he tells Tom Grennan, the musician and lifelong Sky Blues fan who fronts the interview.
“You've got to be careful trying to prove every doubter wrong, because it's not possible.
“My personal ambition to prove any doubters wrong is sort of always there, but I try not to let that be my driver.
“I've been in the Premier League as a player, I've been as a manager, I understand the challenge of it. I can't get ahead of myself and I can't worry too much about the outside world because otherwise you succumb to it, you'd be making different decisions.”
The Premier League quickly reminded Coventry of the scale of that challenge. Opening day, away to champions Arsenal, ended in a 3-0 defeat. A jolt, but not a shock.
Lampard knows his team cannot simply roll out last season’s script.
“We want to keep hold of the good things from last year,” he says. “We'd be fools to think that we'd just go and play like we did in the 'Champ' every week when we dominated a lot of games.”
The adjustment, he accepts, starts with defending. Space is smaller, mistakes are punished quicker, and opponents carry far more individual quality. Coventry’s front-foot style will need to be sharpened, not abandoned.
Brave, not timid
Ambition, though, has not dimmed. The obvious question is survival. Lampard does not dodge it, but he refuses to let it shrink his players’ mentality.
“Everyone's going to ask me, 'staying in the league, is that your target?',” he says. “Of course it would be success, because it's such a big challenge for us, but in the beginning, we'll go into it and go, 'let's stick our chests out and let's be brave about it'.”
“These boys have earned where they've got to, so go in with that attitude. There's a lot to lose, but go and show yourselves.”
Next comes a first home game of the season, against fellow promoted side Hull City on Saturday. A chance to respond to Arsenal, to feel the noise of a Premier League afternoon in Coventry again, to see whether Lampard’s blend of Jose’s edge and Carlo’s calm can carry the Sky Blues through a year that will test every part of his managerial identity.
