Heading into a Champions League match against Benfica,
Bayern Munich had been in the midst of an alarming slump. Their results had
been so poor that recently-hired head coach Niko Kovač already found himself at
risk of being fired.
However, the Bavarian team broke their slump in emphatic
fashion, hammering the Portuguese club 5-1 and securing the first seed in their
group.
Another notable fact about the game was that Robert
Lewandowski’s first of two goals made him the seventh player in Champions
League history to score 50 goals in Europe’s leading club football tournament.
What makes this feat even more impressive is that
Lewandowski now has 51 goals in 77 Champions League games.
To put this into perspective, legendary strikers such as
Samuel Eto’o, Filippo Inzaghi, Didier Drogba, and Thierry Henry have all played
more Champions League games than the Polish legend (yes, we can call him a
legend at this point), but none have scored as many goals.
Despite his obvious goalscoring prowess, Lewandowski has
arguably become the most overlooked football superstar in today’s game.
When discussing who the best strikers in the world are,
after the obvious picks of Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi, most would cite
names such as Kylian Mbappé, Mohamed Salah, Luis Suárez, Harry Kane, and
Neymar, among others.
One player who is frequently forgotten in these discussions
is Lewandowski – a real shame considering all that he has accomplished and the
true big-ticket star he really is.
As of the writing of this post, Lewandowski has played
650 career games for club and country, scoring 403 goals. Of these, 240 of them
have come in high-leverage games, which I define as games in a major domestic
league, the Champions League, or an international tournament.
To put this into perspective, when comparing these
numbers to some of today’s other elite strikers of around the same age,
Lewandowski’s numbers look even more impressive.
Sergio Agüero has played 688 games and scored 374 goals,
of which 267 have been in high-leverage games.
Edinson Cavani has 379 in 652 games, with 158 being on
the biggest stages.
Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang has netted 242 in 496 games. Of
these, 139 were scored in high-leverage games.
Luis Suárez has 436 in 685, with 225 in the most
important games.
Only Suárez has more career goals, while only Agüero has
scored more in high-leverage games. Furthermore, both have played more career
games than Lewandowski.
Lewandowski has also been the Bundesliga’s top goalscorer
three times over the last five seasons.
He is one of 24 players to have ever accomplished this
feat in a major European league.
The others to have done so include names such as Gerd
Müller, Lionel Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo, Thierry Henry, Alfredo di Stefano, and
Michel Platini. Thus, as I mentioned earlier, Lewandowski is already among the
all-time greats.
His goals also translate to wins, as Lewandowski has
helped his teams to seven league titles and three domestic cups.
As a pure finisher, there is arguably no better in the
world today than the man from Warsaw. The clearest evidence of this was his
legendary five-goal performance for Bayern Munich against Wolfsburg in 2015. In
that match, Lewandowski came off the bench to score five goals in just nine
minutes, an all-time record. To cap it off, his fifth goal was a spectacular
bicycle kick from the edge of the penalty area.
But beyond all of this, one other thing is clear:
Robert Lewandowski is the greatest footballer to ever
come out of Poland.
Through the years, Poland has produced some great
players.
Zbigniew Boniek. Kazimierz Deyna. Grzegorz Lato. Jerzy
Dudek. Łukasz Piszczek.
Lewandowski has surpassed every single one of them.
The player with the best case among those I just
mentioned is Boniek, but Boniek was frequently on stacked teams throughout his
career – he played for a Juve team containing Platini, Marco Tardelli, and Paolo
Rossi, as well as a Poland team with Deyna and Lato.
That Poland team reached two World Cup semifinals. Just
think what Lewandowski could have done with such teammates.
Maybe it’s the fact that his playstyle is not flashy. Maybe
it’s the fact that he’s from Poland. Or, it could be the fact that he plays for
Bayern Munich, a club often overlooked as well.
But right now, there seems to be no stopping the Bayern
superstar.
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