Lampard scored against Chelsea a month after joining Man City — and called it a proud moment

Frank Lampard once declared he would never play for another Premier League club, but the Chelsea legend broke that pledge in 2014 when he signed a short-term deal at Manchester City — and made the move even harder for his former team-mates to stomach by scoring against them a month later.

Lampard’s goal came in a 1-1 draw at Stamford Bridge, arriving just weeks after his controversial move to the Etihad. The transfer itself was a by-product of his agreement to join MLS side New York City FC — City’s sister club — but he spent an interim spell in Manchester before crossing the Atlantic, even though New York had already announced him as their player.

For John Terry, seeing his closest friend and long-time colleague line up in sky blue was difficult enough. Watching him score against a Chelsea defence he captained was another matter entirely. “It just doesn’t seem right to see them in different shirts,” Terry said at the time, referring to both Lampard and Ashley Cole, who had left for Roma that same summer. “We have grown up together and won and lost together at Chelsea. We have done many great things and it was sad to see them go.”

Lampard did not celebrate the goal, but he did not pretend it meant nothing either. Reflecting on the match in 2024, he described it as a moment of professional pride. “It was a pretty surreal day for me,” he said on City’s official website. “Everyone made a huge deal of it and I understand why but, for me, I was proud to score for my new club — that professional instinct — and I was very pleased but also very respectful of Chelsea. There was a little bit of fate in it, of course. Maybe I had some inside info on when to make the runs coming up against my old team-mates.”

Lampard remains Chelsea’s all-time top scorer with 211 goals in 648 appearances — a record that underlines just how loaded with symbolism that afternoon at Stamford Bridge was. Terry, for his part, has since moved into coaching, taking up a part-time role with Chelsea’s academy.