10 Best Strikers Of The 21st Century
5. Robert Lewandowski
Total career goals: 453 and counting
When I started thinking about this list, I was sure Lewandowski would be in the top three. After all, we’re talking about a player who was Bundesliga’s top scorer four times. Who, at 213, is only 7 goals away from reaching third spot on Bundesliga's top scorer of all time list (and given his consistency, who knows if he won’t even surpass Klaus Fischer’s second-spot tally of 268?). A guy who just recently broke yet two more records with his goal against Union Berlin (that goal meant he now scored in Bayern Munich’s last 12 games in all competitions, as well as in the first nine Bundesliga games of the season). A guy who once scored five goals in nine minutes.
Lewa not breaking into the top four says more about the quality of the players ahead of him than about his abilities, although his Champions League failures do play a role. Unlike forwards like Cristiano Ronaldo or Didier Drogba, who scored an impressive 10 goals in 10 finals winning all 10, Lewandowski, just like Agüero, tends to disappear in big European games. He’s the fifth all-time top scorer in the UCL with 59 (and with Benzema sitting fourth at 62, he has all the chances in the world take his place this season), but he was too often a bystander as the likes of FC Barcelona, Real Madrid, Atlético Madrid or Liverpool outplayed his team (with the notable exception of his four goal hauling of Los Blancos in 2013 with Borussia Dortmund).
The same can be said of his performances with the Polish international team, in which he follows the trend of dominating the qualifying stages and never scoring at the actual tournament. Poland’s star man netted twice in major competitions: one in each European Cup he’s played (2012 & 2016), never in a World Cup.
Such misfortunes highlight what may be Lewandowski’s only weakness. Give him a half-decent pass in the area and he’ll put it in. But he’s never been the type to save his team by creating something from nothing, be it dribble past three players to equalize, put in a direct free-kick or score 25-yard screamers.