Robert Lewandowski celebrates a goal against Elche. /
The Polish striker, with 11 goals in eight games so far, averages more goals per game for Barça than in his entire career
Barcelona already has the best Robert Lewandowski. The Polish striker has started his stage in the Barça team like a shot and in just two months he has already established himself as the great figure of the culé project. His figures, with 11 goals in eight games with Barça, are the best of his entire sports career. Never before, not at Bayern Munich, not at Borussia Dortmund, not even in Poland, had he achieved a scoring average like the one he has so far this season.
Eight matches. That is the time it has taken Lewandowski to clear up any hint of doubt that there was around his signing. Neither age – he is already 34 years old – nor the difficulty of facing a new project have been able to with the voracity of a legendary striker. The Polish striker has signed two months in which his impact on Xavi Hernández’s team has been total and he has even allowed himself the luxury of pulverizing all the scoring records that he had achieved in his career.
And it is that Lewandowski’s figures are those of a player who is going through, as incredible as it may seem, the best moment of his life. Between the League and the Champions League he has scored 11 goals in eight games so far, which means that he has a scoring average of 1.38 goals per game. These numbers exceed, for the moment, those of the 2020-2021 season, when he scored 48 goals in 40 games (1.2), and the 55 goals in 47 games that he left in the 2019-2020 season, which was his scoring ceiling to date and earned him his first The Best.
This start to the season is even more surprising when compared to what other changes of scenery have been for Lewandowski in the past. The Warsaw striker signed his worst year at Borussia Dortmund in his debut in German football, with only nine goals in 43 games, and repeated sensations at the start of his with Bayern. Those 25 goals in the 2014-2015 campaign are the worst figures for ‘Lewy’ in the last decade. It was the last time he achieved earthly numbers.
Today those figures seem to fall short in light of what his adaptation process to the new Barça has been. Lewandowski sees the goal with the usual ease, he is a natural leader and has also managed to expressly catch all the automatisms that are needed to fit into the culé model. He is a round signing and Xavi no longer skimps on praise for his new striker. “It is a blessing. He feels comfortable, he adapts, he is aware of the responsibility he has had since he wanted to come here and he makes the difference”, assured the Catalan coach, knowing that there are few more things that can be asked of a player who has just landed .
Finishing and effectiveness
Lewandowski has also been a reference for Xavi’s model in the rival area. The new ‘9’ culé is the player, with 22 shots, who shoots the most in the entire League, above Benzema’s 17 or Joselu’s 16. Of those shots, 36% end up in the opposing team’s nets, a very high percentage for a player who executes practically everything he picks up near the goal. This effectiveness has allowed the former Bayern player to be the top scorer in the Spanish competition ahead of Borja Iglesias, who has six goals, and begin to look askance at a Golden Boot for which Erling Haaland has already scored directly with his spectacular figure of 11 goals in seven games.
Lewandowski’s great start as a culé also surpasses that signed by other great strikers in the history of the Barça team. No one supports the figures of him. Romario, at this point in the season, had six goals, Samuel Eto’o had scored five and Zlatan Ibrahimovic added the same amount when he arrived to accompany Leo Messi, who a year after his departure has seen how someone begins to fill that immense void that the Argentine left.
