The goal is Robert Lewandowski’s birthmark. He came into the world with a gift and he has it tattooed on his body and on his mind, worked in equal parts in the bosom of a family of athletes who have manufactured a perfect killing machine put at the helm of Poland in this European Championship. The Bayern Munich striker is one of the great gunners of the 21st century, an old-fashioned ‘nine’ that every time he steps into the opponent’s area, he sounds all the alarms. The defense of Spain will have to be attentive to this prodigy of nature, a 32-year-old man with the smell of gunpowder. In May he closed the Bundesliga with 41 goals in his service record, a record that served him to beat the record of the legendary ‘Torpedo’ Müller, an attacker from another world like him, lethal and fearsome, admitted in 2020 with Alzheimer’s. To keep football from losing its memory, Lewandowski has surpassed a glorious mark that had been in place for almost half a century. They are both already immortal.
The Polish ‘killer’ closed the 2020-2021 season as the Bundesliga’s top scorer for the sixth time in the last eight years. Now he is in charge of a Poland that seeks to surprise in group E, where Spain continues with the favorite poster. He is in charge of transforming the football model proposed by his coach, Portuguese Paulo Sousa, into goals, who in January took over from the successful Jerzy Brzeczek. The outgoing coach signed some extraordinary numbers in the qualifying phase: 25 points, eight wins, one draw and only one loss in ten games. Six of the 18 goals of the team carried the stamp of the Bayern forward.
The forward was born in the Polish capital, Warsaw, into a family of athletes. His father, Krzysztof Lewandowski, was a prominent judo champion who became a professional footballer and taught him fighting techniques and martial arts. It suited him very well to make a living in the area, where it is often lethal and merciless. The boy was sewn to a ball, so there was no choice but to drop him on a football field. Robert lost his father when he was just 15 years old and found his refuge and his reason for being in the ball, something with which to escape from pain, medicine that his mother administered with responsibility. Iwona Lewandowska, a former volleyball player, like the forward’s sister, supported her son in bad times and encouraged him with a sweet promise: for every goal he scored, he bought him a cake. Thus grew a small predator that over time became a ‘killer’. To the 41 goals in the Bundesliga we must add another five from the Champions League and two in the Club World Cup, in addition to the six scored with Poland in qualifying for the Euro.
Stardom
Lewandowski began kicking the ball first in the lower echelons of Leszno’s modest Partyzant. It all started there and continued with Delta Warszawa, the Legia and Znicz Pruszków affiliate, a team with which he was proclaimed top scorer in the second division and achieved promotion. Lech Poznan recruited him right away – he paid less than 400,000 euros – and three years later they transferred him to Borussia Dortmund for 4.5 million. It was there that the Pole exploded, with 103 goals in 187 games, adored by the yellow wall. Everything he touched turned to gold, so the Bavarian giant bought the alchemist. In 2014 he took him to Munich, where he is still breaking records. 294 goals in 329 encounters trace the profile of an alien.
With a degree in Physical Education and Sports from the Wyzsza Szkola in Warsaw, Lewandowski is married to Anna Stachurska, a bronze medalist in karate at the 2009 World Cup. The striker has never been given a Ballon d’Or and when it was already his, in 2020, it was suspended due to the coronavirus. Of course, UEFA repaired him with the award for ‘Best player of the year’ and for FIFA it was ‘The Best’, ahead of Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo. A recognition to a striker of race who began scoring goals for cakes. Now 32, he’s doing it for the glory.
.
