Not the hand of God but an act of faith. And the camera caught the moment with all the resonance of a great Renaissance painting. It captures a moment of transfiguration. A sports photographer’s snapshot becomes a symbol of something far greater for thousands of fans. For many this image of thanksgiving will feel like the Stamford Bridge equivalent of that most moving Christian tableau, the deposition from the Cross.

Frank Lampard, his final mission accomplished, relinquishes himself to some divine power. He falls to his knees, eyes closed as if in prayer, in his left hand the black armband he was wearing as tribute to his dead mother. His physical strength has been surrendered to a spiritual fate.

It is a pair of teammates who have to support him. They are the believers who have benefited from their friend’s act of faith. They cradle him in their arms, forming the classic pyramidal composition of a 15th-century masterpiece. The lines created by their locked gazes, the zigzagging angles of their interlacing limbs, form dramatic patterns across the surface plane of the picture. This gives the image visual force. It will plant this photograph as securely in the imagination of the football lover as Michelangelo fixed his images of sacrifice in the minds of religious believers.