Insatiable Robert Lewandowski now has stats to rival Messi and Ronaldo

One always thought that going past Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo at the summit of individual achievement would require a different approach, and a different awarding criteria. No one could match their freakish numbers, and a new age would recognise something else – Luka Modric-esque artistry, or the sort of defensive mastery produced by peak Virgil van Dijk, for example.

The most remarkable aspect of Robert Lewandowski’s rise to the summit of the world game, then, is that he has done so by putting up cold, hard figures that compare with the two greatest of the past decade or so. If it is felt that the sport’s individual awards should be justified by team conquests – and February’s Club World Cup win meant Bayern became only the second club, after Pep Guardiola’s Barcelona, to rack up a sextuple – then Lewandowski’s continually climbing standards at the age of 33 made a pretty compelling solo case for recognition.

On a purely individual level, beating Gerd Müller’s record for the most goals by a single player in a Bundesliga season was the high point. In early January, we knew it was on as he surpassed Müller’s Hinrunde record for the amount of goals scored in the first half of the Bundesliga campaign – Lewandowski had 21, compared to Müller’s 20 from 1968-69. Fast forward to May and his last goal of the season with virtually the last kick of the Bundesliga campaign, against Augsburg, saw him eclipse Müller’s tally of 40 from 1971-72 with his 41st, in the nick of time. It was wildly celebrated, and a magnificent moment that revealed just how much this meant to a publicly modest man.

In the era of Messi and Ronaldo we have become almost numb to statistical excellence. Yet Lewandowski has entered the same realm as those two, where new milestones are required to find a way to describe his brilliance, because we’ve run out of superlatives. There were so many during 2021 – the most consecutive games scoring in the Bundesliga, scoring in the most home games in a row, scoring in nine straight Champions League games in multiple seasons, with going past Klaus Fischer into second on the Bundesliga’s all-time list and taking Raúl’s third place in the Champions League goalscoring table dotted in-between.