Sergio Agüero asked Lionel Messi what he had to do to win the Ballon d’Or. The 10th was clear: “You have“We have to win the Champions League.” Kun never achieved it. He had already retired from football when City was crowned in Istanbul in 2023. He had the (bad) luck to coincide with Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi. The same as Robert Lewandowski. And the Pole managed to lift the Orejona in 2020. But, as a result of the pandemic, the gala was not held that year. France Football. A year later, when it resumed, the award went to Messi again in the face of a stunned Lewandowski. Surely, at 36 years old, the Polish forward no longer aspires to the Ballon d’Or. He achieved, in any case, an award as invisible as it is objective: with his double this Tuesday against Brest he totaled 101 goals in the Champions League and became the third player to surpass the barrier of 100 goals in the Champions League. He sat, nothing more and nothing less, than at the table of Cristiano Ronaldo (140) and Lionel Messi (129).
“I’m very happy, it’s a nice figure. “Years ago I didn’t think I could score more than 100 goals in the Champions League,” Lewandowski celebrated. Dani Olmo joined in the toast for number 9. “I want to congratulate Robert for those 101 goals and to continue adding. It is a great number,” said number 20. To reach the figure of 140 goals, Cristiano needed 180 games (0.77). Messi, for his part, had a scoring average slightly higher than that of the Portuguese: 129 goals in 163 games (0.79). The best ratio of the three is Lewandowski, 101 in 125 (0.81). The Pole is also the one who needed the fewest shots: 451 shots, compared to 527 for the Argentine and 793 for the Portuguese.
“The team helps him score these goals. Obviously, he knows he has to score and plays for it, but what the team does is wonderful,” said Hansi Flick, who had already met the Pole at Bayern Munich. And number 9 did not want to contradict his coach. Accustomed to looking only at his statistics, Lewandowski recognized the work of his teammates. “The most important thing for me is to help the team, provide solutions. Today we played as a team,” he said. He recalled, in any case, Barcelona’s latest setbacks in the League against Real and Celta: “Sometimes we don’t have patience, we are slow, but if we have it we score. These are three very good points. After the selection, we did not play well in the League. There are many games, the key is patience,” said Lewandowski.
“We could have scored more, but I’m happy because after Vigo putting in this performance, it’s great. We dominated the game, the rival. We defended well, we attacked well. In a long season unexpected things happen. But, in the long run, the important thing is to be able to return,” Flick concluded. Barcelona recovers its game and its goals in Europe. Nobody celebrates it more than Lewandowski.
A contemporary of Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo, the Pole could only aspire to the Silver Ball in 2021. No one will be able to take away from him in any case that he has become one of the great scorers in European history. His statistics defend him.
