Lampard jumps to the defence as pressure grows on players to restrict goal celebrations

Lampard defends players for celebrating goals during second wave of Covid-19

Speaking in an interview (h/t Daily Mail) before the league game against Fulham, Chelsea manager Frank Lampard spoke in defence of footballers celebrating on the pitch amid the second wave of Covid-19.

Recently, there has been a debate around whether footballers should be celebrating goals by hugging each other. This comes during a time when the United Kingdom is experiencing a second wave of the coronavirus.

In recent weeks, several Premier League games have been called off due to a Covid-19 outbreak in the teams’ camps. In light of this, players were asked to not hug or do handshakes while celebrating goals this week.

That, however, did not happen and now Premier League teams are set to have urgent meetings as the government may have to step in. This has led to people questioning if footballers are following social distancing or not.

Players are humans too

But Frank Lampard believes that players are acting on their natural instinct and clubs are doing everything they can to maintain social distancing. He says that teams take all the measures off the pitch, but on the pitch, it’s different.

“When you’re actively playing football on the pitch and there’s a lot of instinct involved then it’s not always as easy to draw a clear line on pitch and in training.”

He says that it is very difficult to regulate goal celebrations, but players would try to follow it as much as they can. However, Lampard believes it’s not easy to take instinct out of football.

“If we want to take the instinct out of the game, I think it’s not that simple. Players are good lads, they don’t want to do the wrong thing.”

More Chelsea News:

• Chelsea given a boost in the race for prolific star Erling Haaland
• Chelsea prefer to loan out Fikayo Tomori to a foreign club
• Frank Lampard in the market for a new defender in the summer

Lampard also added that players do not have the luxury of working from home and that they have people they have to take care of as well. He asks people to understand that players are ‘humans’ too. (h/t Daily Mail)