When Frank Lampard left Chelsea, he had one regret: he had not been allowed to say goodbye. Football handles its departures messily. Lampard, the man who had scored more goals for Chelsea than any other player and who had scored them from midfield, the man who had lifted their only European Cup after the most extraordinary final in Munich, had been waiting to discover whether he would be offered a new one-year contract.

A week after Chelsea’s last home game of the 2013-14 season, a goalless draw with Norwich that saw ‘Super Frank’ substituted during the interval, he was told he would not be coming back.

Cruel is football as Roy Keane, who was dumped even more bluntly by Manchester United, once said. Compared to the way Liverpool stage-managed the departure of Steven Gerrard, one of the few English footballers who could compare to Lampard, it was also clumsy and classless.

The day that Lampard announced that after a stint with Manchester City and New York City he was leaving the game, Chelsea’s captain, John Terry made amends with a post on Instagram. There have been many criticisms made of Terry, a player who made his own giant contribution to Chelsea’s triumphs, but the man who shared so much with Lampard could never be accused of a lack of feeling.

“The greatest player in the history of our great club,” Terry wrote. “It was an absolute pleasure playing with you, mate, and seeing first-hand the dedication and hard work you put in on and off the pitch. I miss you next to me in the dressing room and miss you grabbing a bag of balls after training when everyone else went inside.

“You have won everything and should be extremely proud. It’s been my pleasure and honour to experience those great moments with you.” He added: “648 appearances – we nearly caught Peter Bonetti and Ron Harris – 211 goals and a gentleman on and off the pitch. . . Love you Lampsy.”

They were words shot through with love. When Lampard prepared to quit English football for New York after a few months with Manchester City, he reflected that he could probably have done without the fanfare that accompanied Gerrard’s leaving of Liverpool. “I didn’t need a fanfare,” he said walking around the vast indoor pitches at the Etihad Campus. “My fanfare was looking back on victories like winning the European Cup in Munich and winning the league at Bolton. These are the things that stick in my head.”

Frank Lampard retires: His career in numbers

He was so often compared to Gerrard, another great, aggressive midfielder, but while the Liverpool captain was softer than his public image, more swayed by what people thought of him, Lampard was considerably tougher.

He was born into football royalty, his father, Frank, was a centrepiece of the West Ham teams that won FA Cups and reached European finals with something of a swagger. His uncle was Harry Redknapp. He went to a fee-paying school, Brentwood, and got an A-grade at Latin. There were excuses not to train that extra hour. Unlike Gerrard there was not the urban waste of Huyton to escape. He would have been looked after.

But, inside, Lampard was hard. Surviving at Chelsea during Roman Abramovich’s churn of managers was an art. After he forced his way out of West Ham following his father’s sacking, there was Ranieri, Mourinho, Grant, Scolari, Hiddink, Villas-Boas, Di Matteo, Benitez... Mourinho once more.

Lampard is Chelsea's all-time top goalscorer (Getty)

Lampard kept pace with the churn, impressed just about every one of the disparate and well-rewarded men who came to Stamford Bridge. Only during the brief interregnums of Rafa Benitez and Andre Villas-Boas was his position under serious threat. He finished those seasons with the Uefa Cup and the European Cup.

Jose Mourinho invited him to Internazionale. Learning Italian would have presented few problems for a man whose children are half-Spanish. He had lost his mother to pneumonia, there had been some difficult revelations about his father’s private life and Milan would have represented a break from the past.