[情報] 坦布林談蘭帕德、莫里尼奧和美好的往日
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/teams/chelsea/9958063/Bobby-
Tambling-Frank-Lampard-is-Chelseas-greatest-ever-player-and-I-hope-he-
breaks-my-record.html
By Jeremy Wilson - 6:30AM GMT 28 Mar 2013
After scoring his 200th Chelsea goal, one of his first thoughts was to
pick up the telephone and contact Bobby Tambling, the only other person to
have reached that landmark in the club's 108-year history.
Tambling is suffering from Martorelli's ulcer, a painful leg condition,
and had been unable to leave his hospital bed in Cork for three months.
Yet having also battled pneumonia last Christmas, there has been a marked
improvement in his condition over recent days and he has now begun a
programme of rehabilitation aimed at getting him walking again.
For the first time since falling ill, Tambling is also ready to talk about
all things Chelsea; from Lampard and the imminent prospect of having his
all-time goalscoring record overhauled to his own legendary career during
the swinging sixties alongside such icons as Jimmy Greaves and Peter
Osgood.
“It was lovely to hear from Frank,” Tambling said. “Ever since this
problem has started, I've spoken to Frank a number of times. I've been in
bed for the last three months so I've got to rehabilitate myself to
standing up and getting back to walking.
“I've done a bit of that today and you feel a bit heady and giddy. I've
been fairly bad but everyone who is coming to see me has realised that I
have made big strides back to better health.
“Frank is always asking how I am and telling me to get well soon. He
tells me to stay positive, take my time and that I will get better. He is
a complete gentlemen and he knows that it has been a long haul.”
Tambling's respect for Lampard the person is matched by his admiration for
Lampard the footballer. Having played alongside or carefully observed all
of the Chelsea greats, Tambling is clear about who should be regarded as
the very best in the club's history.
“If you take what Frank has done personally and then add in what Chelsea
have done as a team in the last 10 years, he must surely go down not just
as one of the greats but probably the greatest player Chelsea has had,”
he said. “This has been the greatest Chelsea team ever. He thinks like a
striker, performs like a striker.
“I think that he will certainly get to the record now. At different
times, people thought, ‘this guy could do it’. We all thought Kerry
Dixon was going to do it but I believed from four or five years ago that
Frank would be the one.”
With Lampard as prolific as ever this season and needing just three more
goals to break the record, Tambling shares the general bafflement at the
club's failure to extend his contract beyond the end of this season.
“I find it difficult to understand,” he said. “If he wasn't performing
like he is, you might understand it a little bit and say he has run his
course. But he is still performing well and still scoring.
“It is not just one or two managers he has done it for, he has done it
for every manager. He is a tremendous pro and great for the game so I find
it difficult that something can't be worked out but I'm not the club. I'm
an outsider to all this so can only know the situation from what I read in
the press. I think if he doesn't reappear next year, there will be a lot
of disappointed supporters.”
Tambling is also enthused by the possibility of Jose Mourinho returning
this summer as manager.
“He is different – he brings places to live, wherever he has gone and
whatever people think of him. I think even after he left, Chelsea was
still running on his fumes for two or three seasons.
“He really started the run of trophies and I don't think they have ever
lost it really. He gave them a winning mentality and the lads who are
still there from his time carry that spirit into the team.
“I think Jose had such a good time with Chelsea that he would probably
love to come back. People would be very excited – he would get a
tremendous welcome from the fans.”
Tambling often refers to the “Chelsea family” during our conversation
and, even amid such vast change at the club, it is reassuring to hear that
his generation remain involved.
A suite at Stamford Bridge is still named in his honour and, before his
recent ill health, he would return regularly from his home in the coastal
Irish village of Crosshaven, just outside Cork. He has met club owner
Roman Abramovich and many of the current players.
“You think a lot of people wouldn't remember us but we are given a great
welcome and made to feel part of the family,” he said.
While this generation have come to embody playing success and financial
excess in almost equal measure, Tambling's era was clearly very different.
Frugal, fun but, in its own way, the Chelsea team of the sixties was
equally glorious.
Abramovich would certainly have appreciated the flair – if not the
consistency – of a squad containing Tambling, Greaves, Osgood, George
Graham, Terry Venables and Charlie Cooke. He might also have seen
something of John Terry in the leadership qualities of Ron Harris.
The only actual trophy of Tambling's Chelsea career arrived in the League
Cup of 1965, when he scored along with Venables and Eddie McCreadie to
secure a 3-2 aggregate victory against Leicester City.
Chelsea regularly flirted with other silverware during Tambling's 11 years
at the club, finishing third in the League in 1965 and losing a Uefa Cup
semi-final replay to Barcelona the following year. It was the FA Cup,
however, that produced both his biggest disappointments and greatest
memory.
“The highlight has got to be the FA Cup final,” he said. “Back then,
it was the trophy everyone wanted. The Cup final was massive, not just for
the players but the fans.
“Near enough every year in the 1960s we would have a good run. It was
almost like a volcano building up. We had lost in two semi-finals in the
mid 1960s, which was the most sickening round to go out, and then we
reached the final in 1967. Driving down Wembley Way, I just remember
thinking, ‘God, we have made it at last’. We gave the supporters a day
out but we didn't turn up ourselves. We had a shocking day.”
Tambling did score Chelsea's only goal, a late consolation, in a 2-1
defeat to Bill Nicholson's Tottenham.
“Throughout the 1960s we were on the fringe of everything,” Tambling
said. “We had some great players but probably didn't win the trophies we
should have. It was an education to play with Jimmy Greaves. I don't think
there has been a striker quite like him.
“Ossie came along in the mid-1960s and he was so skilful for a big guy,
his passing was absolutely incredible. You would make a run and he would
always find you.”
It was also an era when as much enjoyment was to be found off the pitch,
often in the bars and clubs of the King's Road, as on it. Lampard may be
able to command ￡150,000 a week in wages compared to the ￡100 ceiling
for the top players in Tambling's team but there is still no hint of
bitterness.
“People always say to me, ‘I bet you wish you played now’,” Tambling
said. “Obviously we would like to have earned a bit more money but we
played in a great time. The world was beginning to change, coming out of
the war. People were starting to find their feet and the 1960s was a great
time just to be alive.
“We'd be looked upon as idiots if we said we wouldn't like to earn the
money they do now but with it comes different things we didn't have. One
of those is that we could live our own lives away from the stadium and
just do our own thing in normal life. We didn't have the television
coverage there is now and we were just like anyone else.
“Football is forever changing and you have to change with it. I never
thought I'd see a game like Spain playing with no central forward. The
game changes – 4-4-2, 4-3-3 – you have to be a mathematician to work it
out.”
The constant evolution, of course, is part of the fascination and Tambling
will be tuning in from his hospital bed to see if fixtures against
Southampton on Saturday and then Manchester United on Easter Monday will
be the moment when Lampard creates history.
“I've been very pleased to be the record holder,” he said. “It's lovely
but, in the end, you know that someone else will come along. That's how it
should be and who could be better than Frank Lampard? You couldn't meet a
nicer guy and he's the best player Chelsea has probably ever produced.”
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