Why goal machine Lewandowski keeps scoring
‘I spoke to a lot of professors, who told me a lot about the mentality side, what I should do to be better’
Robert Lewandowski is the one that got away from the Premier League. Sir Alex Ferguson rang him before he bought Robin van Persie for Manchester United. Indeed, many of England’s leading clubs have coveted his signature – and with good reason.
Listening to him talk is like being given a lecture in the art of goalscoring – from the importance of body language, to nutrition to even visiting university professors to train his brain to help his football.
First that phone call from Ferguson. This interview starts with Lewandowski shown clips, on an ipad, of the remarkable four goals he scored in the first leg of Borussia Dortmund’s Champions League victory over Real Madrid seven years ago.
The hat-trick goal, he says, is his favourite with the footage showing him controlling the ball with his left foot, dragging it back with his right and striking a fierce rising shot high into the net – all in a flash of movement.
“I saw Pepe was coming from the right side, I saw Xabi Alonso coming from the left,” he explains. “I knew the space was so small to try and score the goal. But I was so focused on my skills. I didn’t think too much. I just wanted to do what I do best: score.”
Shortly afterwards, Ferguson was asked about Lewandowski and he hinted the striker’s transfer to Bayern Munich was not the done deal everyone expected. He was right, as the player did not join Bayern for another year, but it was actually the summer before, in 2012, that United were closer to signing him.
“It was the time when I was really, really thinking about a move to Manchester United,” Lewandowski says. “Because of Ferguson and because of Manchester United. But Borussia Dortmund, they said: ‘No, that’s that’.
“That was the first time I was thinking about the move there because if you get a phone call from Sir Alex Ferguson … for a young player it was something amazing. That was a special day for me.”
Dortmund – then coached by Jurgen Klopp – did say no then, but in 2014 Lewandowski left after his deal ran out. The rest is history – and an astonishing history at that. Lewandowski has continued to amass goals, season after season, including 38 in just 32 games for Bayern this campaign (including two last night in the 3-2 win over Paderborn). He has 10 in the Champions League, including four in only 15 minutes against Red Star Belgrade. Now aged 31, if anything his goalscoring rate is accelerating as he gets older. Chelsea, Bayern’s opponents in the Champions League last 16 on Tuesday, have been duly warned.
Lewandowski believes in self-improvement. He donates heavily to charity and has invested in several internet start-ups and e-commerce ventures, as well as finding time to become fluent in English and German, and develop good Spanish. And in his football, he is dogged in his pursuit of excellence – always searching for an edge, always doing more.
The Pole’s latest move – at the urging of his wife, Anna, a former athlete who is a specialist in nutrition and famously overhauled his diet – is to train his brain.
“I studied it. I had a lot of exercises to do,” Lewandowski explains. “I spoke to a lot of professors, who told me a lot about the mentality side, what I should do to be better. Not only with my brain but the part of the brain that works with the body. I get a lot of information about it and I try to do it, not just at home but in training if I know it’s an important exercise. The small details are very important for me, and not just as a striker, to have a longer focus.”
How does it work? “It’s difficult to explain exactly, but training with your brain to be focused like in school. On a computer, exercises,” Lewandowski says. “I had to be focused on the exercise, not looking at my phone to see what’s going on. Mental focus on a high level.”
One of the professors asked, for example, if Lewandowski had a pre-match routine. “Everything you do before the game, the routine is also important to keep the high-level concentration. The brain gets the information that something important is coming. And if you do this and that, you will be ready.”
Part of Lewandowski’s “ritual”, he realised, was to always put his left boot on first. “You can play very good; play very well. You can make a pass; you make a cross. But if you want to score almost every game you have to change your mentality. Maybe 70 per cent is from your head and not your skills. Why? That is why not everyone can play like a striker … You have to be selfish.
“For me, especially, I know I have to think about the team. If you win, the team wins – not you. If you lose, the team loses. Sometimes, my selfishness is important for the team. I am trying to score the goal, trying to help us win.”
While he pays tribute to Anna
– “I think my wife changed everything outside the pitch” – there are two obvious coaches who have had a profound influence.
The first was Klopp, his manager for four years at Dortmund, where he won two Bundesliga titles and reached one Champions League final. His impact was on far more than just his CV, however.
“Jurgen changed me personally,” Lewandowski says. “Before I had a lot of problems with my body language. It didn’t matter what was happening, my body language was the same.
“Sometimes you have to be more angry, sometimes your actions should be more expressive. For me, that was never going to happen.
“I was like … [moves his hand in a straight line] and that’s why I had
‘I am the player who will always try. I want to be the one who can do something special’
to change. That was under Jurgen Klopp. I spoke with him about this situation and he told me sometimes he didn’t know if I was angry or happy. I tried to change my body language.”
Klopp also took a basic approach to incentivise his main striker. “We bet that if I score 10 goals [in training] then Jurgen Klopp gives me €50.
“I remember the first training sessions, I scored three or four. Then after five, six, seven sessions I score seven, eight. Then after three months I score every training more like 10. After a few weeks Jurgen said, ‘No more, it’s too much for me’.
“That was part of my mentality to be focused on training. That was very helpful for me. And good in another way!”
If Klopp was central to moulding Lewandowski’s mentality, Pep Guardiola was key to advancing his tactical intelligence. Guardiola had been at Bayern for a year when the striker moved to Bavaria on a free transfer in 2014, and immediately set about challenging his perception of how he should play.
“Maybe a lot of people thought that we would be playing without a No9,” Lewandowski says. “So, for me, that was like ‘OK, maybe I should try to play in another style’. I learnt a lot from Pep. We spoke a lot about football, about tactics, about what I should do and, for me, that was something new. I knew that if I could play for Pep Guardiola with his mind and his ideas – about tactics, about strikers – that it would be good for me.”
It was under Guardiola that Bayern reached three consecutive Champions League semi-finals, losing all of them. It is still a competition that Lewandowski has not won, and there is a sense of unfinished business when he contemplates the latest challenge, which resumes at Stamford Bridge in three days.
“In the last six years we have been four times in the semi-finals and once in the quarter-finals,” he says. “We were always close and sometimes we didn’t have much luck, but I still believe that one day we will play in the Champions League final and we will win it.
“If you play at Bayern Munich you think of such things and I hope, in the future, that we can do this.”
In his case it will not be for the want of trying. “Everything I do, not only on the pitch, I am doing because I want to play for a long time, many years more. Not just now. I feel very good, I don’t feel 31, and that’s why I believe that everything I am doing now shows the process is working to keep me at the top for the next five or six years.
“I never say that it is too much or that I am afraid. I am the player who will try. I have never been the player who is afraid of something: not from myself or from the team. I want to be the player who can do something special.”