Is Robert Lewandowski the best striker in the world?

Like Pele’s 1000th, Robert Lewandowski’s 41st goal of the season teased, tormented and almost didn’t happen before it finally did.

Pele didn’t want a penalty to fetch his 1000th but the packed Maracana forced him to take it because, as Eduardo Galeano wrote in ‘Football in Sun and Shadow’, “people felt there was something sacred about it.” From the middle of October in 1969, the media was warming up to the 1000th goal but Pele got stuck on 995. And on 996 and 999. “I had a sudden cold feeling that I was doomed to go for years and years without scoring another goal,” he said in ‘My Life And The Beautiful Game’. It finally came against Vasco da Gama on November 19, the day Charles Conrad and Alan Bean made mankind’s second landing on the moon.

There is controversy about Pele’s goals, not the number but the status of games in which some of them came. About Lewandowski’s goal that broke a Bundesliga record dating back to 1972, or the ones he scored in 2020-21 to go past Gerd Mueller’s mark, there is none. But it almost didn’t happen because Augsburg goalkeeper Rafal Gikiewicz kept repelling everything Lewandowski tried. Till a Leroy Sane shot slipped out of his grasp and following his parents’ advice of trusting his instincts, Lewandowski was at the right place at the right time for the 90th minute toe-poke. Like he was for his first goal for Poland, off an Ebi Smolarek shot that ricocheted into play after grazing the upright, against San Marino in 2008.

“The record they said would never be broken is now his and his alone,” said the television commentator in the Augsburg game as Lewandowski took off his shirt and ran towards the corner-flag but slid on his knees before getting there. Manuel Neuer ran from Bayern Munich’s goal to congratulate the man who had more goals than anyone in Europe’s top five leagues this season. What makes the effort even more creditable is that Lewandowski missed five games due to a knee injury. And unlike the other top leagues which have 38 games, Bundesliga has 34 per season.

“Kids from Poland are not supposed to be the best in world. It’s just not supposed to happen,” Lewandowski had written in The Players’ Tribune in January. This was after he was adjudged Fifa Player of the Year. That was for 34 league goals — and 55 overall in 47 games — that helped Bayern win the 2019-20 Bundesliga, the Champions League and the DFB Pokal. Time was when Lewandowski was accused of not showing up in Champions League knockout rounds. That ended last term when he scored three goals against Chelsea in two round-of-16 games, one against Barcelona in the quarter-final and another in the semi-final.

This time, Bayern exited the Champions League in the quarter-finals — they were among the games Lewandowski missed – and were stunned by Holstein Kiel in the second round of the DFB Pokal (Germany’s cup competition) so they have only their ninth successive Bundesliga title to show for, a campaign immortalised by the world’s best striker. Former Germany midfielder Dietmar Hamann had even suggested that Bayern rest Lewandowski in the final game to preserve Gerd Mueller’s legacy.

Lewandowski’s first Bundesliga goal this season was from a penalty, as were seven more, including the one to equal Mueller’s record. The momentous occasion — only he and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang got over 30 goals in the past 40 seasons of Bundesliga – was marked by Lewandowski lifting his shirt to reveal a photograph of Gerd Mueller captioned ‘Gerd4Ever’.

“The way Robert Lewandowski did it this season, so much respect. Always talking about his idol Gerd Mueller, the inspiration Gerd Mueller gives him. Hopefully, he will go on for a couple of more years and challenge his own record,” Juergen Klinsmann, the former Germany captain and coach, told ESPN. In 2020-21, Lewandowski got 48 goals in 40 games and is now only 88 short of Gerd Mueller’s 365 league goals.

Between the first and the 41st, Lewandowski scored every kind of striker’s goal. There were those where he would steal away from his marker to find a pocket of space; shots from range; shots from inside the 18-yard box often with no backlift but unerring in placement and accuracy; headers and goals with assists from Thomas Mueller (he had 21 all season).

“They are feeding him the right way,” said Klinsmann after pointing out that Lewandowski had scored nearly half of Bayern’s 99 Bundesliga goals.

Lewandowski has been scoring goals all his life: at Poland’s third division club Znicz Priszkow, at Lech Poznan, at Borussia Dortmund where he said Juergen Klopp made him the player he is — using him first as a No. 10 before moving him up — for Poland and at Bayern. Getting by as well as he does without a striker, Pep Guardiola is not known for his fondness for a traditional No. 9. But it didn’t deter Lewandowski when he joined Bayern in 2014. “I am not a classical centre-forward. I am good at attacking from the side for instance,” he was quoted as saying in a podcast by football magazine ‘The Blizzard’. Revisit the 2015-16 Bundesliga game against Wolfsburg where Lewandowski scored five goals between the 51st and the 60th minutes and you will see Guardiola holding his head, looking incredulous. “I can’t believe it as player or coach,” Guardiola, by then won over by Lewandowski’s work ethic, said after the game.

But to get better with age needs tremendous focus and hunger, said Klinsmann. “He is never satisfied…this hunger drives him week in week out. Also (he is) always a team player. He comes back, he helps out when the opponent team has a corner-kick and he is again running up.” Proof of what Klinsmann said came in Bayern’s first game of the season in the form of an assist for Thomas Mueller; Lewandowski executing the perfect Rabona, swinging his right leg across from behind his left. He had eight more assists in the season.

Named Robert because his father Krysztof thought an internationally accepted name would help his career, the powerfully built Lewandowski has stayed remarkably injury free. Part of that he attributes to the diet planned by wife Anna, a karate champion, whom he met at Warsaw’s academy for physical education, the same institution his parents met some 20 years prior.

“I just wish that he gets a huge achievement with the Polish national team. Maybe this will happen this summer in the Euros. A player of his charisma, his standing, you wish the biggest success with the national team,” said Klinsmann.

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