Robert Lewandowski

Robert Lewandowski (born 21 August 1988) is a Polish professional footballer who plays as a striker for La Liga club Barcelona and captains the Poland national team.

He is regarded as one of the best players of his generation and as one of the best strikers of all time, as well as one of the most successful players in Bundesliga and Bayern Munich history.

He has scored over 600 senior career goals for club and country.

In 1997, he joined MKS Varsovia Warsaw, where as a teen he played for seven years.

The following year he moved to 4th tier side Delta Warsaw, where he finally managed to play in the first team, scoring four goals at the end of the season.

In 2006–07 III liga, Lewandowski was the Polish third division's top goalscorer with 15 goals, helping Znicz Pruszków win the promotion.

The next season, he was the top scorer in the Polish second highest division with 21 goals.

A full international for Poland since 2008, Lewandowski has earned 146 caps and was a member of their team at the UEFA European Championship in 2012, 2016, and 2020, and the FIFA World Cup in 2018 and 2022.

With 82 international goals, Lewandowski is the all-time top scorer for Poland and the fourth overall men's international goalscorer in Europe, only behind Romelu Lukaku (83), Ferenc Puskás (84) and Cristiano Ronaldo (123).

In June 2008, Lech Poznań signed Lewandowski from Znicz for 1.5 million PLN.

Earlier that month, Lewandowski's agent Cezary Kucharski offered him to his former team Sporting Gijón, which had been promoted to the La Liga, Spain's first division, after ten years in the Segunda División.

However, Gijón rejected him.

He debuted for Lech on 17 July 2008 as a substitute in the first qualifying first leg match of the UEFA Cup versus Khazar Lankaran from Azerbaijan, in which he scored the only goal of the evening in the 75th minute at the Tofiq Bahramov Republican Stadium.

After being the top scorer in the third and second tiers of Polish football with Znicz Pruszków, Lewandowski moved to top-flight Lech Poznań, helping the team win the 2009–10 Ekstraklasa.

In 2010, he transferred to Borussia Dortmund, where he won honors including two consecutive Bundesliga titles and the league's top goalscorer award.

In 2013, he also featured with Dortmund in the 2013 UEFA Champions League Final.

Prior to the start of the 2014–15 season, Lewandowski agreed to join Dortmund's domestic rivals, Bayern Munich, on a free transfer.

In Munich, he won the Bundesliga title in every one of his eight seasons.

He won IFFHS World's Best International Goal Scorer Award in 2015 and 2021, IFFHS World's Best Top Goal Scorer Award in 2020 and 2021, and IFFHS World's Best Top Division Goal Scorer Award in 2021.

In 2015, while playing for Bayern, he scored five goals in less than nine minutes against VfL Wolfsburg, the fastest by any player in Bundesliga history as well as any major European football league for which he was awarded four Guinness World Records.

Moreover, he has won the Bundesliga Top Scorer Award in a joint-record seven seasons, alongside Gerd Müller, five of which were won consecutively, another record.

Lewandowski was integral in Bayern's UEFA Champions League win in 2019–20 as part of a treble.

He is one of only two players, alongside Johan Cruyff, to achieve the European treble while being the highest goalscorer in all three competitions, and the first to do it as the sole top scorer.

Lewandowski is also one of only two players to be top goalscorer for club and country in Europe for three consecutive years (2019–21), alongside Cristiano Ronaldo.

He was widely considered the best player of 2020 and deserving of the Ballon d'Or, until it was canceled.

In 2022, he was signed by Barcelona, where he won the Supercopa de España, the La Liga title and the Pichichi Trophy in his debut season.

He holds the joint-record for most top scorer awards in Europe's top five leagues with eight, alongside Lionel Messi, and the record for the most consecutive with six.

He also won the IFFHS World's Best Player in 2020 and 2021 and the European Golden Shoe for the 2020–21 and 2021–22 seasons.

Lewandowski has been named the Polish Footballer of the Year a record eleven times and the Polish Sports Personality of the Year three times.

Moreover, he has won the Gerd Müller Trophy twice, in 2021 and 2022.

In 2020, Lewandowski won the Best FIFA Men's Player Award (retained in 2021) and the UEFA Men's Player of the Year Award.

He has been named to the UEFA Team of the Year twice.

He is the third-highest goalscorer in the history of the Champions League.

Lewandowski has been named the VDV Bundesliga Player of the Season a record five times.

He has scored over 300 goals in the Bundesliga (second-highest goalscorer of all time in Bundesliga, only behind Gerd Müller's 365 Bundesliga goals), having reached the century mark quicker than any other foreign player, and is the league's all-time leading foreign goalscorer.

He most prominently won it in the 2020–21 Bundesliga where he scored 41 goals in a single campaign, breaking Gerd Müller's previous Bundesliga record of 40 goals, set in 1971–72.

He also holds the record for most consecutive UEFA Champions League match wins, with 22.

On 30 November 2021, he finished second in the Ballon d'Or, just 33 points behind the winner Lionel Messi.

Lewandowski was born in Warsaw and grew up in Leszno, Warsaw West County.

He took his first steps in football as an unregistered player for the local club, Partyzant Leszno.