Jurgen Klopp:
“One of his finest qualities has always been with his back to goal, shielding the ball. The fact that he has become a world-class striker is down to his work ethic in training and his ambition. The way he motivates himself is extraordinary.”
The Best Number 9 of the Decade:
In the hunt for fresh material in an unplanned 10-week absence of elite sport, Sports media has turned to philosophical tangents and nostalgic retrospectives. Football Twitter has turned into a shrine to the 90s and 2000s, indulging the rhetoric that back then the game was ‘pure’ and ‘classic’. It is difficult to skim more than 10 posts without finding at least one gushing homage to an internet darling like Ronaldinho, Del Piero, or Batistuta. What this retrospect has done is elevate these baggy-shirted stars of previous generations to a level above all players of the 2010s not named Cristiano Ronaldo or Lionel Messi. Collective nostalgia and idealism is a danger to accurate history, as the echo chamber of those who grew up on the 90s and 2000s vintage place it upon an unreachable pedestal. Perhaps it is only natural that we idealise those who we no longer have the pleasure of seeing on a weekly basis, but nostalgic video clips have a strange way of making you believe that Patrick Kluivert was a better striker than Robert Lewandowski.
Credit: UEFA: Nostalgia is great and should be enjoyed and indulged, but it should not cloud our collective memory.
The unprecedented consistency and quality of Ronaldo and Messi’s performances over the last decade has cemented them as two of the Top 5 players in the history of football. But a side-effect of this super-humanity is that World Class players of the 2010s generation risk being forgotten as simply ‘the best of the rest’. Where Shevchenko, Drogba, and Crespo are hailed as superstars of a Messi and Ronaldo-less generation, Agüero, Cavani, Suárez, and Benzema are not afforded the same acclaim. This is wrong, and we should seek to differentiate, compare, and determine who among the World Class cohort of the 2010s have risen above their peers.
Thus, this week we dissect Robert Lewandowski, and ask the question: Is He the Best Number 9 of the Decade?
The Numbers:
In no other position on the pitch are opinions more driven by statistics than the Number 9. However, as fans become smarter and better informed there is a recognition that Number 9s can be facilitators as much as finishers. Linked with the rise of 30+ goals-per-season winger, Real Madrid won 4 Champions Leagues in 5 years with Karim Benzema as their Number 9 (a reasonable goalscorer who was profoundly effective in the most successful team of the decade). Liverpool are currently dominating the richest league in the World and are the reigning European Champions, and yet Roberto Firmino hits nowhere the goalscoring numbers of Mane and Salah. However, even Cristiano Ronaldo identifies Benzema as the key to that Real Madrid team, and Klopp gushes of Firmino who is “world class pretty much every day” and admits Liverpool “would be lost without him”. What makes Robert Lewandowski special is that he combines the all-round play of a Benzema with the goals of a selfish Number 9 of the 90s and 2000s era.
Lewandowski is the European Cup’s fourth highest ever goalscorer (64), and is set to comfortably eclipse Raul (71) this season or next. In comparison to other strikers of the decade he is well ahead of most; Agüero (39), Cavani (35), Suarez (24), and Higuaín (24) are his closest pursuers. Only Benzema is on a par (64), and that tally has come in 33 more matches. So, in raw goal output, Lewandowski reigns.
European Cup All-Time Top Scorers List
This plays out in the goals-per-game ratio. Amongst the Top 50 highest scorers in European Cup history, Lewandowski’s 64 goals in 86 games (0.74) is 9th for goals-per-game, ahead of almost all contemporaries. Gerd Müller (0.97), José Altafini (0.86), Ferenc Puskás (0.85), Alfredo Di Stéfano (0.84), Lionel Messi (0.81), Ruud van Nistelrooy (0.77), Cristiano Ronaldo (0.76), and Jean Pierre Papin (0.76) are his superiors. Thus, the only players in the living memory of most readers to better Lewandowski are Ronaldo, Messi, and Ruud van Nistelrooy. Two aliens, and a striker who gave little-to-nothing to his team beyond goals.
The European Cup is also where Lewandowski, in a single game, became an instantly recognisable name to all football fans. On April 24th 2013, a Dortmund team still relatively without international recognition despite claiming back-to-back Bundesliga titles thrashed Real Madrid 4-1 at Westfalenstadion in the Semi-Finals. Lewandowski scored all four goals, the third of which was met with audible awe and excitement from Gary Neville (“what a player he is!”). Dortmund ultimately went on to lose 2-1 to Bayern Munich at Wembley, but Lewandowski had confirmed himself as a World Class striker.
Credit: UEFA: Gary Neville: “What a player he is!”. Lewandowski scores 4 fantastic goals as Dortmund thrash Real Madrid 4-1.
Over the next season there was much speculation between Bayern and Dortmund; a cold war over the in-demand Pole whose contract was coming to an end in 2014. Some had reservations; German journalist Rafa Honigstein questioned Bayern’s need for Lewandowski when they already had Mandžukić, Mario Gómez, and Claudio Pizarro. With concerns over unsettling good strikers already at the club, Honigstein’s reservations were perfectly reasonable considering that Mandžukić outplayed Lewandowski and scored in that Wembley final. But Bayern were determined, and club executive Karl-Heinz Rummenigge claimed in Bild that Bayern “have no intention of negotiating with Borussia Dortmund over the transfer of Robert Lewandowski”. What ostensibly appeared to be an attempt to placate tensions between the clubs was far from it; this was a cryptic confirmation that Bayern intended to take Lewandowski on a free at the end of his contract in 2014. They did just that, and severed a relationship of trust between the two clubs that still has not recovered. 234 goals later, Rummenigge has been more than vindicated.
Lewandowski’s supreme goalscoring superiority at domestic and European level has made Honigstein’s understandable reservations seem absurd. His Bundesliga statistics are record-breaking. He scored 30 Bundesliga goals in consecutive seasons, a feat achieved by none since the great Gerd Müller in the 1970s. 30 goals has long been a mark of English Premier League greatness achieved by a select few, and Lewandowski has managed this twice in a league where you have 4 fewer matches per season.
Credit: Transfermarkt
But Lewandowski’s goalscoring feats are best exemplified by 9 minutes in September 2015 which left manager Pep Guardiola with his head in his hands in Bobby Robson-esque astonishment. Introduced at half-time with Bayern trailing Wolfsburg 1-0, Lewandowski broke 4 World Records in scoring 5 goals between minutes 51′ and 60′. This feat exemplifies an insatiable appetite for goals, which Lewandowski admits developed during the time when he battled with Aubameyang for the Bundesliga golden boot. Lewandowski explains how that battle motivated him, and turned him from a striker happy to score 1 goal, to one who “thinks about the 2nd” as soon as he has the 1st.
Credit: Fox Sports: Even Pep Guardiola was stunned by Lewandowski’s record-breaking rampage.
Thus, the numbers set Lewandowski apart. Given his physique, professionalism, motivation, and commitment to health and diet, it is reasonable to assume he could continue for at least another 4 years. If he does that, he will be well established as the European Cup’s 3rd placed goalscorer.
Verdict: The numbers are clear. Lewandowski is scoring with a consistency that few can match.
The Trophies
Individual feats aside, the other tangible measure of the quality of a player is in their team accolades. I am uneasy with the rigidity with which players are judged on trophies, as it is too often used to prop-up a weak argument that X player is better than Y. Respected journalists and players cite Ronaldo winning Euro 2016 with Portugal as the definitive proof that he is greater than Messi. Messi has reached 4x international finals with Argentina (Copa América x3, World Cup 2014), which is arguably a measure of more sustained success than Ronaldo. Either way, the relative ‘failures’ of both internationally are not a fault of their own, but a fact of being hamstrung by squads not of the requisite calibre to regularly compete for major international trophies. Thus, in the same way as Ibrahimović has never come close to international honours and Ryan Giggs never went to a World Cup, some players are simply a victim of circumstance.
In the case of Lewandowski, it would be ridiculous to judge his career on a lack of success with the Polish national team. A much better gauge is his domestic trophy-haul, where the Bundesliga title has all-but followed him around since his arrival in Germany in 2010. Dortmund won two Bundesliga titles in his first two seasons in 2010-11 and 2011-12, and since then the Bayern monopoly has lasted 7 seasons (5 of which with Lewandowski as their Number 9). Bayern’s monopoly is oft-used as evidence of the lack of competitiveness in the Bundesliga, but these 7 titles between 2012 and 2019 are comfortably the longest streak since the German Championship began in 1903. Pre-Lewandowski, Bayern had won just 4 of the 8 previous Bundesliga titles between 2006 and 2014. Since his arrival, it has never been in doubt.
And yet, there is a feeling that Lewandowski’s career has not delivered the trophies it should have. Despite his exceptional scoring feats in the European Cup, Lewandowski’s relationship with the competition is a curious one. It is where his goalscoring ability has attracted the most international attention; it is where he made his name with that performance against Real Madrid; and it is a trophy which (thus far) has eluded him. Lewandowski spoke about his disappointment at being at only “60%” fitness when Bayern were robbed in the Bernabéu in 2017 (losing 4-2 after a questionable red card and an offside Ronaldo goal). This match fuelled the growing rhetoric that Lewandowski is not clinical in the clutch moments, an idea only heightened as Ronaldo ruthlessly completed a controversial hat-trick for Real Madrid. But fitness issues aside, there is no evidence that Lewandowski goes missing in big games. In 2015 he scored knockout goals against Shakhtar, Porto, and Barcelona; in 2016 he again scored key goals against Juventus and Atletico Madrid; and in 2017 he scored in both knockout ties against Real Madrid and Arsenal. It is only 2018 and 2019 that represent aberrations against his European Cup record, and that coincides with a difficult post-Guardiola period of transition for Bayern.
Credit: BT Sport: A disappointed Lewandowski as Ronaldo takes Real Madrid past Bayern in highly controversial circumstances.
Verdict: Defining a player by their trophy-haul is dangerous. Lest we forget, Djimi Traore is a Champions League winner but Ronaldo Nazario, Agüero, Buffon, and Ibrahimović are not. Lewandowski was instrumental in Dortmund’s back-to-back title wins at the beginning of the decade, and has been even more instrumental in ensuring Bayern’s monopoly since then. There is no doubt he will be desperate to add a European Cup medal to his Bundesligas, but he himself admits he will be “as happy” with his career whether he wins a European Cup or not. The sophistication and experience of a player who knows better than most that the European Cup can elude even the greatest players, and that it will not define him.
The Verdict: Defining the 9:
The Number 9 is perhaps the most difficult role to define. Players as varied as Javier “Chicharito” Hernández, Radamel Falcao, Peter Crouch, Wayne Rooney, and Zlatan Ibrahimović have identified as Number 9s. Defining a Number 9 is often a riff of cliches; ‘a fox in the box’, ‘can play up there on his own’, ‘a finisher’, ‘a reference point’. Frankly, what sets Lewandowski above the rest more-so than even the statistics, is that he fits into every single one of those categories. His goalscoring numbers, as we have seen, are all-but unparalleled by all-but Messi and Ronaldo, and he is a focal point to attacks in a completely unique way for Bayern and for Poland. He has excelled under wholly different styles for Klopp, Guardiola, Ancelotti, Heynckes, and now Flick. Messi and Ronaldo aside, Lewandowski is the greatest goalscorer of the 2010s, and he is doing it whilst giving so much more than just goals.
Simply, we should enjoy Lewandowski, because he is doing things that only super-humans can better.
Pep Guardiola:
“He is one of the most professional footballers I have ever worked with. He eats, sleeps and trains for his job. He’s never injured because he focuses so much on the right diet and proper preparation.”
How Robert Lewandowski Works is part of a fortnightly Podcast and journalistic series called How Football Works. Find us on Apple Podcasts and all good Podcast apps.
If German football history interests you like it does me, I thoroughly recommend Das Reboot: How German Football Reinvented Itself and Conquered the World by Raphael Honigstein.
The How Robert Lewandowski Works podcast is available from 07/06/2020 at Apple Podcasts and Spotify Podcasts, and goes includes greater depth on Lewandowski vs Real Madrid, International Football’s Victims, His Nearly-Move to Blackburn Rovers, as well as the Weekly Quiz, and more.
If you have any questions about this or any other episode, please submit them to @WorksFootball on Twitter, or to CJSHowFootballWorks@gmail.com. If you want to support this series, you can do so at Patreon.com/cjshowfootballworks.
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Thanks for reading/listening, see you next time.
Chris x
Episode List:
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- Episode 1: How Boca Juniors Works.
– Apple Podcasts
– Article - Episode 2: How Real Madrid Works: Total 80s Edition.
– Apple Podcasts
– Article - Episode 3: How The Galacticos Worked: Part 1.
– Apple Podcasts
– Article - Episode 4: How The Galacticos Worked: Part 2.
– Apple Podcasts
– Article - Episode 5: How French Football Works.
– Apple Podcasts
– Article
- Episode 1: How Boca Juniors Works.
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