Did FC Barcelona actually ask Robert Lewandowski to stop scoring goals so that the club wouldn’t have to pay bonuses to FC Bayern?
There have been rumors about this absurd-sounding demand for a long time, and now Lewandowski himself has spoken about it – and has not denied the rumors. On the contrary.
“There are things I don’t want to talk about. I have great respect for Barcelona and the people who work there. I was aware of the club’s situation. There were many other problems that had to be solved for the good of the club,” Lewandowski said in an interview on Polish journalist Bogdan Rymanowski’s YouTube channel.
Meaningful Barca statements from Lewandowski
The Pole then became a little more specific: “In short, it was a bonus, and everyone knows that Barcelona watched every Euro closely back then, and it was no small thing. It didn’t change anything for me. I don’t have a problem with it, but it couldn’t get out of my head and I was thinking about whether I should score a goal or not.”
Lewandowski left it open whether he ultimately consciously complied with the board’s request and intentionally didn’t score any more goals.
As a reminder: Journalist Sebastian Staszewski reported in his Lewandowski biography “Lewandowski. Prawdziwy” (“Lewandowski. The True One”) that the Barca board approached the Pole two match days before the end of the 2022/23 LaLiga season and asked him not to score any more goals.
At this point, Barcelona were already confirmed as champions and Lewandowski had 23 league goals. If he had scored two more goals and reached 25 goals this season, the Catalans would have had to pay FC Bayern Munich an additional bonus of 2.5 million euros.
A circumstance that financially strapped FC Barcelona absolutely wanted to prevent. Whether consciously or unconsciously: Lewandowski didn’t deliver or score against RC Mallorca and Celta Vigo, even though he was on the field for 90 minutes.
