Frank Lampard, the manager of Everton, responded to the retirement of former Chelsea midfielder John Obi Mikel.
Frank Lampard remembered the day he shared a pitch with Mikel Obi while Chelsea was defeating Bayern Munich in the 2012 UEFA Champions League final.
The Englishman also expressed his best wishes for the future to the former Super Eagles captain.
In a post via Instagram, Lampard wrote: “Congratulations on your amazing career mate. A pleasure playing next to you and sharing that beautiful 120 minutes in Munich with you.
“Good luck for all that’s coming.”
On Tuesday, Mikel Obi announced his retirement from football in a statement on his Instagram page.
After a productive career with the Nigerian national team and at the club level, the 35-year-old Nigerian retired.
Since leaving Birmingham City at the end of the 2020–21 season, the 35-year-old, Mikel, had been without a team for the previous 16 months. He had left Chelsea in the middle of the 2016–17 campaign after making 372 appearances in the previous ten years, which still ranks him 18th all-time. With the exception of the FIFA World Club Cup, he had already won everything there is to win, some of it more than once (and the rest of his teammates).
Mikel was a flashy attacking midfielder at the beginning of his career, outplaying even Lionel Messi himself at the age of 17. He was never the flashiest and was frequently decidedly unflashy. Then, of course, José Mourinho transformed him into a player known as “The Human Final Whistle,” most remembered for stopping the
the opposition and being nearly impossible to take the ball from when he had possession.
