On top of all that, Lewandowski has been the undisputed star of Poland for many years now. With their Euro 2024 qualifying campaign beginning on Friday in Prague against the Czech Republic, let's take a deeper look into the ideal number nine's career to date.
Lewandowski's adaptation to LaLiga has been essentially a smooth continuation of his performances in the Bayern Munich jersey. In the opening 26 league rounds, he has played 1819 minutes, and unless he has been injured or serving a suspension, he has started every game bar one.
No other striker in Spain, meanwhile, is getting better shooting opportunities with his movement in the penalty area than the Polish star. According to the expected goals (xG) model, he has a 70% chance of scoring in every game, beating second-placed Karim Benzema (35) in that statistic by 12%.
While the Real Madrid striker dominates the statistics for average shots per game and touches of the ball in the penalty area, Lewandowski is getting better chances. Perhaps the only way he has deviated slightly from his long-held high standards at Barcelona is as a finisher.
Based on the quality of the chances he has created with his movement, he should have scored 16 times while, in reality, he has 15 league goals to his name this season. What's more, according to a model that looks at the quality of the shot placement itself, he should have scored one less goal than he actually has.
Impressive stuff but we are still talking about a sample of one incomplete season. What's more, it is worth emphasizing at this point that finishing is a secondary skill for strikers. It matters much more whether a player can anticipate where the ball is going to go and get into quality positions often enough.
Lewandowski is a great example of this at the moment. Although he is converting just 21% of his shots so far, he is creating such a high number of them per game and from such dangerous areas that he is scoring goals regularly. As mentioned, he currently has 15 goals in the league this season, the most in LaLiga.
If he doesn't miss another game before the end of the season and continues to get the same quality of scoring opportunities, his tally should reach 24. Of course, this is just an indicative figure without counting penalties and the very real possibility that his finishing could improve or decline.
Between the 2015/16 and 2021/22 seasons in a Bayern jersey, he had a total of 923 attempts at the opponents' goal (4.3 per game on average) with a total xG of 199 - resulting in 219 goals.
That means he finished chances significantly better than the average player in his position would have. In total, in that period, he converted 24% of his attempts, enough to rank in the top 10% of strikers in the top five leagues in the world in this particular metric.
At first glance, however, it may appear that Lewandowski has slowed down compared to his last season in Germany. After all, he scored an impressive 35 goals during that season, 11 more than second-placed Patrik Schick (27) of Leverkusen. While that is true, it is also important to take into account how dominant Bayern's offensive performance was compared to the rest of the Bundesliga in that campaign.
While Leipzig and Leverkusen racked up an identical 58 expected goals (1.7 per game), Bayern recorded an astronomical xG of 90 (2.7 per game) by season's end. Lewandowski's chances accounted for 37% of Bayern's total xG then and now, at Barcelona, it's very similar at 35%.
In short, the Pole has adapted to the new competition very quickly and has lost nothing of his ability, even though he will celebrate his 35th birthday in August.
A more dominant performance was perhaps expected from him at the autumn World Cup in Qatar, where he only scored twice, including a penalty. But there, it is necessary to appreciate the context. The Polish team was objectively one of the worst in the whole tournament and, according to the data, their progression to the second round was more a matter of luck.
What continued to be a success, on the other hand, was Lewandowski's performance in the Champions League (UCL) this season. Although Barcelona eventually fell out of the competition behind Bayern and Inter Milan in Group C, the experienced striker proved once again that the UCL is his speciality.
On average per game, he had 10 touches of the ball in the box, produced 4.5 shots, regularly took the ball in dangerous areas and added 20% to reach an 80% chance of scoring in each game.
If you can take away Manchester City's Erling Haaland (22), who really should have his own category in the current season, Lewandowski has generally produced the best numbers among strikers in the tournament.
Moreover, these numbers correspond with a record he has maintained over the past eight seasons of the elite European competition. During this time, he has taken his scoring stats to 68 goals (compared to 61 expected).
He has truly stood the test of time against the best defences in the world and doesn't seem to be slowing down. The only consolation for the Czechs on Friday is the fact that if Lewandowski has underperformed anywhere, it is in his national team jersey.
Follow the match between the Czech Republic and Poland on Flashscore.
