The Revisionism on Lewandowski

Bit of a long post ahead so be aware.

I know it's been ages since Lewandowski left Bayern, and yet every couple months there's a post on this sub about him, but I kinda can't help but contribute to that myself now. I know many players face revisionism, especially after they start to reach the end of their careers, but I feel that Lewandowski has had it worse than most.

Lewandowski joined Bayern as a very optimistic signing. He'd been one of Dortmund's main horns in taking the title (and the 2012 DFB-Pokal. Scored that scrappy hattrick against Neuer), and obviously was a major help to them reaching the final against us in the CL. Poaching one of their most influential players basically guaranteed our dominance in the league, but I think more importantly provided a lot of hope for more trophies in Europe. He went on to become arguably the best striker of the previous generation and one of the best of all time, and I think everyone agrees about his "world class" status, so there's no way he's underrated, right? Well, I do think he is. A lot, actually.

"He didn't have an amazing prime" argument: The main way in which he's underrated is people not regarding his "prime" well. Nobody doubts his longevity, but in conversations against strikers like Suarez (or even, God forbid, Benzema), people always bring up Suarez's prime being better. How? His PL run for Liverpool, sure, a lot of goals, but he has less goal involvements (16 g/a in 32 appearances) vs the PL Big Six than Lewy himself (17 g/a in 18 appearances) in their respective careers. Over 65% of his goals in his record season were against teams that haven't been in the Prem since 2018. Not trying to take away from his achievement, but imo that Prem season is overrated. As for his 2015/16 season with Barca… I think if you put Lewandowski between Neymar and Messi it'd be goals galore anyway. Fuck man, Messi could make Lukaku get over 70 G/A in a year, and in Suarez's case he was his best friend trying to get him to beat Ronaldo for the golden boot. Lewa had 72 g/a in 2019/20 with way less games played than others on the highest g/a leaderboard. 84 g/a in the 2021 calendar year (2nd best of the 21st century), better than Ronaldo's best year (2013). Was incremental in Bayern's Treble/Sextuple, maintaining his consistency for the entire year too.

"Big game ghost" argument: The 2nd worst allegation, arguably the worst actually. 27 g/a in 25 finals appearances for Robert Lewandowski, which is 5th of all time by the way (Behind Messi [52 g/a in 51 apps], Pelé [50 g/a in 31 apps], Cristiano Ronaldo [27 g/a in 40 apps], and Neymar [26 g/a in 34 apps]). I think any Bayern fan can admit Lewandowski's 2018/19 season was really bad, but aside from that he's been incredibly solid in all his UCL campaigns, and off course amazing in his Ballon d'Or worthy 2019/20 season.

Then there's Lewa having 53 g/a in 58 UCL KO Rounds matches (0.91 g/a per game) across his entire career. Was unable to find specifics for his time at Bayern only, but I think he got over 20 goals for Bayern in 30 or so UCL KO games, unsure about assists though. Either way, there's no player let alone striker who compares in that regard besides CR7 and Messi. And that is such a common theme with Lewandowski. Numbers wise, he's only comparable to Ronaldo and Messi. Not saying Lewa is the "BEST BIG GAME PLAYER EVER!!!" but saying he's shit in big games is absurd, and he's still significantly better than 99% of strikers/players of all time in big games. "All time greats" like Thierry Henry don't exactly have a great record.

I do feel that his lacking performances in some UCL games were due to utter lack of service. He unfortunately was never a Musiala who can just dribble several players with ease. Still, at times Lewa was getting like 2 shots off in a game and nothing more, usually from awkward angles with barely any time to set himself due to being swarmed by 3 defenders constantly. That sort of play was bound to not end up with a lot of goals or involvement from him. Either way, there's maybe like 2 strikers since the 2000's that I can think of who are better than him in "big games," yet they could not replicate those performances across an entire season, no other striker got as much accusations of "ghosting" as Lewa (except Kane since he gets a lot of shit for it too, although I do feel he has a bit less of an excuse. Hope he can turn up for us and prove that wrong though).

"Not a complete striker" argument: This one I really just hate, and it's been around since his day 1 at Bayern. Was he an amazing box presence, a "fox in the box?" Yes. Is that all he was? Fuck no, man. He has over 50 goals from outside the box, not including his 14 career freekicks (fair amount considering it was mostly Xabi, Alaba, then later Kimmich taking freekicks during his time at Bayern). That's more than players like Ibrahimovic, Suarez, Kane, ect, and roughly on par with those like Frank Lampard.

He also has 195 assists. More than the majority of midfielders, and an impressive stat considering he never had "clinical" teammates, all while spending his career as a target man and "classic 9." Suarez had Messi and Neymar who you could pass the ball at the halfway line for them to dribble a whole defence and score, counting an assist despite hardly doing any work (exaggeration, but you get my point). Same with Benzema, he had Ronaldo and Bale. And to prove my point with actual evidence: Lewandowski in the 2019/20 league season Lewa had 11 big chances created but only 4 assists. Suarez in 2015/16 had 15 bcc and 14 assists. Muller in the 2020/21 season also had 15 bcc and 18 assists, which should show the drastic difference in the quality of your receiver's finishing in impacting your assist stat. The difference in the return on creation is just absurd. In the absence of Lewandowski we literally saw how much our team struggled to score, so many chances just wasted. However, that forced experience eventually helped them improve, and now Kane has teammates who actually know what to do infront of goal. Well that's also due to our signings but you get the point I'm trying to make.

Then there's his dribbling. He rarely dribbled a whole team, but he was still quite successful in 1 on 1's. Pretty sure he had over 50 dribbles in the 19/20 season with over 55% take-on success rate. His ball control in general was elite the majority of the time. His strength also just allowed him to take on two defenders at once to then chip the keeper so many times, at one point I felt that was literally his trademark finish. That and his heading ability, or need I mention his volleys and overall acrobatic ability? He had literally no weaknesses.

Anyway, that's all I think. I could probably go on for like 20 more paragraphs detailing stats and specific moments from him that, in my opinion, solidify him as the best striker of the 2010-2020 period, but I won't. Kane is great, but he's SO well rounded that he doesn't even feel like a striker anymore, and my brain just misses seeing a classic striker on our team. And aside from that, I do just feel Lewa is heavily disrespected by fans overall. Best raw goal scorer of the last 20+ years, and yet people feel that Benzema (who Madrid fans literally hated up until his one good UCL season, previously wanting Lewa to replace him) is on his level or higher, or that Suarez is levels above Lewa when, if anything, it'd sooner be the other way around.