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This time on My Sporting Hero, our guest is Stephen McGinn.
Stephen recently retired from a successful playing career in Scotland and England, including two spells at St Mirren, Watford, Sheffield United, Kilmarnock and Falkirk. He won the Scottish Championship title with St Mirren in 2018 and Killie in 2022.
Stephen is now a youth coach with St Mirren and is the brother of Scotland and Aston Villa star John and Motherwell defender Paul.
Stephen’s sporting hero is former Chelsea talisman Frank Lampard.
My grandfather Jack was chairman at Parkhead, so Celtic were massive in our family when I was growing up. My childhood hero was Paul McStay; he was the first midfielder I fell in love with and he had everything to his game. Then there followed other Celtic midfield heroes: Neil Lennon, Paul Lambert and Stan Petrov. However, when I became a professional footballer, Frank Lampard was the midfielder I admired most.
When I was playing for Watford, I attended lots of matches across London. Obviously, it’s a brilliant place in terms of choice of games, and one of my father’s best friends was a season holder at Chelsea. I was not a Chelsea fan when I was going to these games, I was going for the enjoyment of the football and to learn; if Chelsea lost, it wasn’t as though I was going home feeling sad.
This was the really special Chelsea side under Carlo Ancelotti and they had some of the best players in the world at the time. There was John Terry, Nicolas Anelka, Didier Drogba, Michael Ballack and, of course, Frank Lampard. Although I was never at that standard, he was the one I could kind of could relate to in terms of how hard work had got him to that level and kept him there. For example, he’s probably the best finisher from midfield of his era and you often heard about how that came from dedicated practice.
I was aspiring to play at a higher level than Watford in the Championship, and by attending games, I picked up little bits and bobs. My coach at Watford at the time was David Kerslake, a former Tottenham player. As part of his coaching journey, he would go and watch matches, and sometimes I would join him and we would discuss the really special players. We got to talking about Lampard, and he told me that he would use a sleigh at training, and this was before the more modern technology and sports science we have today. It was the first time I had heard of someone doing that, actually putting a sleigh on his back and running with it to enhance his power and acceleration from midfield. That was the level of detail he was going to, in order to improve himself.
Gianfranco Zola then became my manager at Watford, when I was recovering from an injury, and he had played with a young Frank Lampard, so I couldn’t have had a better source from whom to get a bit of insight into how Lampard played. I was trying to figure out how I could become a Premier League player, which I didn’t achieve, but you’ve got to dream and you’ve got to believe, and I would only get there by working harder than people who were better than me. However, Lampard worked on his shooting so much it was as though he always hit the target, whereas my shooting never really got better, no matter how hard I worked.
I’ve played with guys whose fathers were club directors, and they carried a stigma because of that. I was Jack McGinn’s grandson, and then, when I started to make it in football, all of a sudden I became John McGinn’s brother. However, my grandfather was always associated with Celtic, and I was never in their system, so I didn’t really carry that stigma. Frank Lampard definitely did, because his father was a famous footballer and his uncle, Harry Redknapp, was his manager when he broke through at West Ham. And as I said, I have played with guys who had that same problem, and no matter what they did, they could never shift that suspicion that they were being favoured while they were at that club.
There is footage online of a fans’ forum at West Ham, with a young Frank Lampard and Redknapp seated there being criticised for favouritism. Looking back, there’s no way Redknapp would have risked his job by playing someone just because he was his nephew. However, it must have been rough for Lampard to have to listen to that, and I admire him for his toughness in riding that out. I believe that no matter what he achieved, his father and uncle’s shadow would be cast over it, and I believe this is why Lampard isn’t regarded – as he should be, in my opinion – as being on a level with two of the most naturally gifted players that England have ever developed: Paul Scholes and Steven Gerrard.
I respect managers and during the Covid season when I was playing under Jack Ross at Hibs, I saw all the things they have to deal with. Therefore, I admire Lampard for going into management, especially considering that he didn’t have to, because of all his wealth and achievements from his playing days. Also, he started at a lower level with Derby and Coventry. I believe that former players become managers because there isn’t anything that replicates that winning feeling. It’s probably just that addiction to winning, that working towards winning football matches and trying to be the best you can be.
What I took from Frank Lampard was how important it is to work on your weaknesses. I spent a lot of my career trying to work on my weaker foot. I wouldn’t have survived the last couple of years of my career if I hadn’t spent so long working on my weaker foot. Frank Lampard worked on his weaknesses in order to stay at the top level, it was about using the sleigh, getting even better, even faster, taking two bags of balls for an hour every day, it was about scoring 15 goals a season and then wanting to score 20 goals a season. When I’m coaching young players, I always encourage them to work on their weaknesses, but to relate it to their game. I tell them not to work on the elements of their game that they are good at, but also not to stray too far from what they’re good at. Because there’s no point, for example, in a striker practicing trying stopping crosses.
I watched an interview with Frank Lampard in which he spoke about always checking for your marker. As a football fan growing up, the top teams predominantly played 4-4-2, or sometimes 3-5-2. There was no defensive midfielder, and there was no attacking midfielder. It was an up and down game. When it moved to a three in midfield, you had a sitter, and in that all-conquering Chelsea team that barely gave away any goals for a couple of the seasons, Claude Makelele would fill that role. Then you had a Michael Ballack or a Michael Essien who would do the up and down, and there was a real onus on Frank Lampard to be the guy who was always in the box. So he always had protection from Makelele, and he had the athletic one next to him who would cover the ground. That probably allowed Lampard to not always be ball-watching, unlike his marker. And then he could take off, and steal the extra two yards on them that could make all the difference.
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