Robert Lewandowski used to be scuffling with in opposition to the chances at Barcelona.
As their disappointing 2023-24 season got here to a related, senior decision-makers on the membership have been obvious to the speculation of marketing the veteran striker later simply two seasons at Barca. He had scored 19 league targets as they completed runners-up to Actual Madrid in L. a. Liga (so as to add to 23 targets in his first season), however Xavi and his training personnel believed Lewandowski, who grew to become 36 in August, didn’t have the urgent skill and off-the-ball necessities to top the sequence anymore.
Six months after, Barcelona are manage of L. a. Liga, have thrashed Madrid and his aged membership Bayern Munich within the time generation, and Lewandowski is the manage scorer in Europe’s manage 5 leagues throughout all competitions, with 19 targets in 17 fits.
Many stuff have modified at Barca right through that generation. Hansi Flick changed Xavi as head lecturer, wonderkids from L. a. Masia, similar to Lamine Yamal and Pau Cubarsi, have endured their important rises and the Catalan membership has awoken as a Eu pressure. Lewandowski has been a very important a part of that good fortune, scoring extra targets than video games performed in each L. a. Liga and the Champions League.
Even for a participant of his giant revel in, the Polish striker is the primary to confess there was a steep adaptation procedure since he arrived as their marquee signing in the summertime of 2022.
“It might be difficult to compare with other clubs, but everything gets very noisy at Barcelona,” Lewandowski tells The Athletic in an unique interview this pace. “I have learnt in these years in the club how to stay away from this. At the start, I read and heard a lot of disinformation and in some cases, I didn’t understand why it was happening.
“But then I understood how this media world works in Barcelona and I decided to be completely out (disconnected from it). I don’t focus anymore on these things, it’s too much and not good for the long term of your career.”
It’s now not been simply the media park that has taken some getting old to for Lewandowski. The 36-year-old performs a vital position in a dressing room filled with precocious abilities. He’s 19 years used than Yamal and Cubarsi and there’s a 16-year time hole between him and Gavi, in addition to a 15-year one with Alejandro Balde, Marc Casado and Fermin Lopez.
Lewandowski and Yamal celebrating right through the Clasico win previous this season (Angel Martinez/Getty Pictures)
At a generation when Barcelona wanted them given the monetary constraints at the membership, the later moment have stepped up and made a profusion affect within the first staff. For used avid gamers, in particular those that didn’t come throughout the membership’s academy, it’s been noteceable to know and include those emerging stars.
“At the beginning of my time here, I needed to understand the new generation — their thinking and everything,” says Lewandowski, who’s talking in his position as an envoy for the virtual leisure market G2A. “I had to learn Spanish as well, but then I started talking with them about different subjects at lunch tables or moments we had together. It’s easy for me to talk about the experiences I’ve had in my career, or simply when I was a teenager.
“Youngsters are completely different now. When I was younger, when a veteran told me to do something, I would obey them directly without a single question. Now it’s different, it’s not good or bad, don’t get me wrong, it’s just different. They are fearless in every sense and not only in football. Society is like that. Youngsters are more fearless and self-confident.
“Over the last year, I feel I have clicked in a better way with them. I usually sit at lunch with several youngsters and we speak about life. I listen to their worries and they ask what I used to think at their age. In a way, we were very similar, but I saw the world from a different perspective to what they have now.”
Flick has acted as a unifying issue between the ones two worlds, the aged and the unused. Eyebrows have been raised when a German supervisor who didn’t talk the language used to be appointed in the summertime, however he embraced the process, advanced the staff and in no time received over the doubters.
“Every individual in the club is doing better,” says Lewandowski. “We, the players, are doing great on the pitch. I also think we all feel stronger. When you have this fitness preparation we have now, you don’t need to worry about keeping the physical demands of the game and then also think about how to beat your opponent. We now know we are fine, we have the power and the legs to do what we need.”
Some avid gamers provide for Flick’s first coaching periods informed The Athletic they have been inspired via the German’s wisdom of each L. a. Masia graduate and what they may deliver to the primary staff. Even the kids have been inspired via this and the arrogance he instilled in them has been translated onto the sound, as noticeable within the emergence of less-heralded avid gamers similar to Casado and the now-injured Marc Bernal.
Lewandowski, after all, had a time with Flick. They labored in combination at Bayern, attaining stunning good fortune in combination in 2020 once they received the Bundesliga, DFB-Pokal and the Champions League. The striker, who used to be named UEFA’s participant of the 12 months right through his generation in Munich with Flick, says the 59-year-old’s man-management has been key to Barcelona’s travel.
Flick and Lewandowski later being named lecturer and participant of the 12 months in Germany in 2020 (M. Donato/FC Bayern by way of Getty Pictures)
“I think the first time I spoke with him this year was in the period when Barcelona were looking for a new manager (Xavi left the club on May 24). It was a short period, about two or three weeks before the start of summer,” he says.
“When I got the information, I was very happy because I knew what was going to happen. I’ve worked a lot with Hansi and we don’t need to talk too much — we understand each other very easily and don’t need too many words. When he tries to explain something, I can understand straight away the way he wants to convince us to play. This is one of the things I like the most about him.
“Not just as a coach, he is a very direct and fair person. Even with the players who do not play, he will try to speak to you and tell you the truth. I think all the players appreciate that because if someone is fully honest with you, then you can understand their decisions better.”
The wondershock is mutual. In September, later Barcelona beat Getafe 1-0 because of a purpose from the striker, Flick didn’t hesitate in announcing: “Lewandowski is, for me, the best No 9 in the last decade of football.”
“I am very glad to see that the coach supports me. But for me, at this point of my career, seeing what somebody says to the media is not that important,” Lewandowski says.
“The most important thing is what he says to me in private, in the dressing room, in meetings or every day in training sessions. There’s even sometimes he (Flick) does not say something to the media but he says it to me directly. This is key.”
Lewandowski talking to The Athletic about month at Barcelona and excelling within the Messi-Ronaldo week (Eduard Duran for The Athletic)
The striker’s phrases would possibly pull you again to terminating season when Xavi used to be complimentary about Lewandowski in media tasks, however that didn’t appear to translate into the membership’s making plans in Would possibly.
“I don’t refer to any moments in particular, but in my career, I have seen that, sometimes, what is going around is not totally real. The value of the words, for me, is bigger when anyone says it in private to me,” Lewandowski says.
“There are a lot of politics as well in the industry. I know too much about this business. I am not the guy who believes if someone says an opinion about anything… I prefer to listen to certain things myself to then trust them.
“This is not only for me I think. For the rest of my team-mates, too. The most important thing is what we discuss indoors, between ourselves.”
Like enough of his team-mates, at Barcelona and his earlier golf equipment, Lewandowski is a obese fan of gaming and has been for a protracted generation.
“As far as I remember, I loved playing games in my free time,” he says. “Even now, when free time is something very valuable, it just allows me to switch off. It is a space of time when I don’t think about anything else. I am so focused and feel in a different world.”
This feeds into what he says is a “very natural” link-up with G2A, who describe themselves as the sector’s greatest market for virtual leisure.
“I have been a huge fan of Formula 1 and NBA for years, so I play those games. Now I also spend a lot of time on military games. I remember when I was like 20, at Dortmund, we were playing online with the rest of our team-mates. We were like 15 different players in the same game. In that time, without family, it was probably easier,” he says with amusing.
His primary precedence in month is his nation — his spouse Anna, who he married in 2013, and his two daughters, Laura (elderly 14) and Klara (elderly 7).
“The first place goes to my family,” he says. “Whenever we have time and opportunity, we spend time doing things, talking, and being together. Children give you a different perspective, you are responsible for them and you watch them develop their interests, look for their own hobbies and pursue them.
“I love showing the world to my daughters.”
Lewandowski has scored 525 targets in 674 video games right through his generation at Borussia Dortmund, Bayern and Barca and 84 in 156 appearances for the Poland nationwide staff. In Europe’s manage 5 leagues, he has received 11 league titles, 4 home cups and lifted the Champions League with Bayern (in addition to being runner-up with Dortmund in 2013).
It’s been a some distance from common trail to soccer’s elite, too. He performed for 5 other Polish groups between the time of 17 and 22, progressing and getting higher strikes every generation, sooner than securing a switch from Lech Poznan to Dortmund in 2010. He hasn’t ever seemed again and will really feel aggrieved to not have received the Ballon d’Or in 2020 — when the award used to be restrained because of the pandemic — later a really remarkable season at Bayern Munich.
“In a way, strikers need to be selfish sometimes,” he says when reflecting on his goalscoring. “There can be situations where the team is not finding their way and the strikers, for the position we play in, can make a difference by doing their own thing.
“I think that there are two positions in the game that require a different personality from other footballers: goalkeepers and strikers. We both can make a difference out of nothing.”
This mentality possibly displays the week he has lived and performed in: led via Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo, two prolific goalscorers who ambitious themselves via fierce ambition to be the most productive within the recreation. It’s juiceless to be on one?s feet grand beside the ones two, however Lewandowski believes there are lots of causes to really feel happy with his legacy — and to understand that he has long past toe-to-toe with the ones two greats in spells and from time to time even surpassed them. Most effective Messi and Ronaldo have greater than his 99 targets within the Champions League; he may clash 100 on Tuesday in opposition to French facet Brest.
“I have been playing football in the same era as Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo. I think I’ve been close to that elite level in some moments and even beat them in different games. I think we can say I was around!” he says.
“It means a lot if you get close to guys like this. It makes me very proud to see that in the era of Messi and Ronaldo, sometimes, Lewandowski also managed to break some records and make an impact.”
Lewandowski and Messi going through every alternative on the 2022 Global Cup in Qatar (Michael Regan – FIFA/FIFA by way of Getty Pictures)
Maintaining greatness is the most important problem for the later moment, similar to Yamal and Cubarsi, consistent with Lewandowski. Previous this season, he described Yamal as “the best winger in the world at the moment”. It used to be obese proclaim — now not simply from a team-mate, however from a striker who has been surrounded via one of the crucial global’s best possible large avid gamers all through his occupation.
“Every young talent in the world needs to have the challenge to not just reach the top of football, but to stay there,” says Lewandowski. “And for me, nowadays, this can be even more difficult than before.
“Now you have social media, footballers with money from a young age, maybe you win some titles and you have a lot of people saying you are great… all of this can be difficult to process. If you don’t build up the mentality in the right time, later on, it can be complicated to figure out the tougher situations.”
In 2022, Lewandowski signed a three-year word of honour with Barcelona, extendable to a fourth season if he performed greater than 50 in line with cent of mins within the 2024-25 marketing campaign. Everybody on the membership expects this clause to be prompted and for Lewandowski to stay Barca’s Negative 9 for any other 12 months.
Are there extra plans in Lewandowski’s thoughts past that?
“I can’t do too many long-term plans right now. I see myself very well now,” he says. “Maybe in two or three years, I feel like I don’t want to play anymore at the top level, but in this age, you can’t know exactly what’s going on. But I feel that I am where I dreamt to be, in the right place with the right people.
“The way Barca fans have supported me, it’s been amazing. In games but also in my daily life, it’s been special.”
He’s focused on the 2026 Global Cup with Poland, too: “I want to be part of the qualifiers and we will see. For me, it’s special to play for my country, I can never say I’ve had enough. I feel I have this power to help them on and off the pitch.”
His word of honour at Barcelona has incessantly been an issue of dialogue across the membership. Lewandowski is among the manage earners and terminating September, in a press convention, president Joan Laporta unhidden the striker presented to “adequate his contract” in some way that would assistance Barca’s price range to check in unused signing Dani Olmo on generation.
“I would prefer not to talk about details,” says Lewandowski when requested what precisely he proposed to the membership. “For me, it is that being a part of Barcelona is not just being a player. I think I can be an important figure in the club in all departments. I like to share what I think, my opinions. I’ve had many experiences in football, management and everything around the industry, so I think my thoughts can be helpful.
“When I spoke with the president, I shared my thoughts. I am a person who is not afraid of sharing opinions. Not to attack anyone, but just discuss the best solutions for the club.
“If we get the club to a better place, that’s going to have a good impact on me, too, so that’s a win-win and the best way to live my profession.”
Barcelona are doing enough of profitable on the week, six issues sunlit of Actual Madrid on the manage of L. a. Liga (albeit their opponents have a sport in hand) and in sequence to qualify robotically for the Champions League spherical of 16.
Lewandowski, on the ripe aged time of 36, is taking part in a starring position.
(Extra contributor: Mark Carey)
(Manage photograph: David Ramos/Getty Pictures)
