07 November 2023 , 09:43
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Frank Lampard claims he pushed for Chelsea to sign Jude Bellingham only for the club’s hierarchy to say no.
Chelsea ’s record goalscorer says that he was “desperate” to bring a 16-year-old Bellingham to Stamford Bridge from Birmingham during his first spell as head coach. The now Real Madrid superstar had a host of suitors at the time but chose Borussia Dortmund because there was a clearer pathway to playing regularly.
While Lampard was ushering in a short-lived youth revolution at Chelsea having leaned heavily on academy graduates such as Mason Mount, Tammy Abraham and Fikayo Tomori (none of whom remain at the club), Bellingham would unlikely have decided upon a switch to West London anyway.
But Lampard told former team-mate John Obi Mikel on his podcast: "When I was managing at Chelsea I was desperate to bring Jude Bellingham in. But I couldn't get it through upstairs - the idea of paying £20m for someone his age."
Lampard has also previously said that he tried to sign Erling Haaland only for the club’s board, who have all departed since the change of ownership, to lack the appetite for a deal.
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Speaking late last season, during a calamitous second spell in the dugout as interim boss, Lampard said he was “pushing big” to sign the Norwegian in 2020.
"I don't know whether he would have decided to come here anyway but I was a big fan of that [signing Haaland]," Lampard said. "There are some of those that happen, aren't there, that people know about or it could have been this way.
"People talk a lot about mistakes or things that could have been in football. Whether he would have come here, I don't know but I was pushing big and on a few other players at the time. But he was the outstanding one. Was it close? He'll only know the answer to that. What stage did it get to? From our point, I was certainly pushing it. I'm not sure what the appetite was everywhere else in the club to do it.
Jude Bellingham was last week named the world's best young player. (AFP via Getty Images)"The competition was big to take him because he was an outstanding player and I think there was a buyout clause at the time which was relatively reasonable, maybe, considering the player. So all those things. I don't have enough detail to say how close it was, it's by the by, really."
And Lampard has also said that he wanted to bring Declan Rice back to the club he left as a youngster - long before the England star decided on moving to Arsenal from West Ham in a £105m transfer. "I wanted to bring in Declan Rice," Lampard said last season. "I was like ‘this kid is going to be the captain of Chelsea for the next 10 years’. It didn't happen, anyway, it is hard to dissect people's work."