Thomas Tuchel praises former manager Frank Lampard
Chelsea boss Thomas Tuchel has hailed former Chelsea manager Frank Lampard for ‘laying the foundations’ for the club’s achievement this season.
The German succeeded Lampard as Blues boss in January, with Chelsea just ninth in the Premier League table after a run of just one win in five games.
The Blues have enjoyed a brilliant season-half to the season, advancing to the Champions League final, FA Cup final, and climbing to third in the Premier League.
“You can only arrive in the final of the FA Cup or a Champions League final if you make it to the group stage,” Tuchel said on Tuesday afternoon.
“Frank has an amazing record in the group stage of the Champions League, he won all FA Cup games that were there to win.
“This lays the foundation to arrive in the finals and I will never forget that it’s like this and we don’t feel ashamed to speak about it because it’s the way it is and it felt like this since the first day I came here.
“I was well aware Frank created his own legacy here, well deserved as a player and then he started to try to even make it bigger as a coach and still it had nothing to do with me.
‘We are well aware we stepped in halfway through the season and tried to fulfil the job he begun.’’
Tuchel won two league titles, the French Cup and the French League Cup with Paris Saint-Germain before his assignment at Chelsea.
Under Tuchel, Chelsea overcame 13-time winners Real Madrid in the Champions League finals, and runaway Premier League leaders Manchester City in the FA Cup semi-finals.
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Chelsea now challenge Leicester City in the FA Cup final this weekend and Man City in the Champions League final at the end of the month.
Questioned whether he has had much communication with Lampard since succeeding him in the Stamford Bridge hot-seat, Tuchel added:
“No, just the message I talked about in the first week when he wished me all the best.
“It was a very nice and polite message that I was absolutely very happy about and showed me that Frank is like what you see from the outside and the inside he is one of the legacies and key fixtures of this club.
“He resembles everything about this club. When you think about Chelsea you think about Frank Lampard and the way he played football shows his character.
“It was a pleasure to receive this message so we had a quick chat after one or two days but since then no more.”
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