This was the biggest ever story that has ever come out of the English press about the game in the USA, whether it NASL or MLS, as Frank Lampard and Steve Gerrard (two England captains of recent years) come face to face in Los Angeles. The story was a two page spread in the Sun newspaper and began like this:
Steve Gerrard and Frank Lampard have spent the summer adjusting to their new lives here in America, written by Charlie Wyett in Los Angeles. The Liverpool legend and family rent a luxury LA mansion in plush Beverley Hills, while Lamps has an apartment near Central Park in New York. And tonight the ex-Chelsea star admits it will feel surreal when their new clubs meet at the StubHub Centre in California.
I was the one who was the main reason Frank ended at Chelsea instead of Leeds United and now this ex-Chelsea star lives in a sheltered flat in Chelsea, ouch!
The story continues to disturb me for obvious reasons, so I’ll continue to the match itself as Gerrard came out on top by five goals to one, although I have not read the report yet as I was out yesterday (no not in a Central Park Bar) but in the British Legion in Fulham with Peter Millard (Tony’s brother) and Billy West. I’ll bring you a match report in a few moments as I need a break to get over such reading. You know, what might have been, and all of those usual cliches “You were born thirty years too early” and as for Martin Peters being “Ten years ahead of his time” a ridiculous comment by Alf Ramsey, this is all becoming too much for me. As I said just now just how much I would have loved to be in Seattle for the Orlando match and now reading that Frank (not Sinatra but Lampard) is living just along from the Hudson River and Hoboken, ouch, and ouch again!
And to make things even worse Michael Buble has just come on Magic Radio Station singing “I Want To Go Home”, is there someone up there trying to send me crazy, which he sings as well. As I save this to my book Aretha Franklin comes on next with “I’ll say a Little Prayer for You” and at this moment in time one would not go amiss.