Robert Lewandowski's eight goals this season have one thing in common. He has scored all of them with the first touch, two of them from penalties: against Osasuna and the second against Alavés. The Pole was always an excellent finisher, a man in the area who scored the net, one of those who needed half a chance to score. That's why the four opportunities he missed in the Barcelona-Atlético game last day are even more surprising. Neither with his left, nor with his head, nor with his right nor after a cut to make room for himself did he get it right. But there is another common denominator in those plays. Oblak did not have to intervene in any. The shots from Barça's number 9 did not find the goal.
And that is more worrying. It is not the first big game in which he has failed to score. This season he was also unable to beat Sevilla, Real or Porto, in the same way that last year he did not register his name on the scoreboards of the Bernabéu, San Mamés, San Siro or the Allianz of Munich. On the other hand, it was decisive in the semifinals and the final of the Super Cup or the Cornellà derby.
Advanced statistics, such as possible goals, shed light. Lewandowski has not been reliable in his best opportunities. Of the three shots per game (one less than in the 2022-2023 season), only 1.2 of them are well directed. Before, it didn't happen to him.
The 35-year-old player is the first to know that he is not on a roll. “He is a machine, almost a robot, when he trains and when he trains the finish,” says Xavi. His way of working and improving his hitting impressed Guardiola when they both arrived in Munich in the summer of 2014. And no one disputes his commitment, demonstrated when he forced himself to be in the Montjuïc classic and play the last half hour, which coincided with the white goals.
There are only eight goals (in Vallecas Lejeune scored in his own goal to prevent Barça's number 9 from doing so) in four months, figures very far from those achieved before going to the World Cup in Qatar. Then, at the beginning of November 2022, he had 18 points.
Everything changed in 2023, a bad year for the Pole. He started it off with a three-day ban, in March he had back problems and in October he couldn't play due to a sprained ankle. You have to go back to when he changed Dortmund for Munich to find such low records. There are 23 goals in the calendar year (there are still four games left: Girona, Antwerp, Valencia and Almería), when he was used to being around 40 and in 2021 (not so long ago, at 33 years old) he left at 58, an outrage. , not counting those of the selection.
In the Bundesliga, at his zenith, the Pole averaged 0.82 goals per game, an average that in the League has dropped to 0.63. With less than a month left to close the year, no hat-trick has yet been scored, another rarity. It is not surprising that the striker misses – sometimes, publicly – playing with two wingers who supply him.
Age is a recurring issue when it comes to a striker, as it is a very physically demanding position. In August Lewandowski turned 35 and has this and two more years on his contract with Barça. When he celebrates his next goal he will already be the fifth oldest scorer in the club's history. He will only be surpassed by Alves, Segarra, Puyol and Alexanko. None of the four were attackers.
Even so, the veteran scorer is the team's top scorer and has given Xavi's team seven points, out of the 34 they have in the table. However, Barcelona is, along with Arsenal, one of the few greats in Europe that does not have a striker who has already surpassed 10 goals.
City has Håland (19 goals), Liverpool has Salah (13 goals), in Madrid Bellingham's 15 goals are impressive, the same as Lautaro at Inter. Mbappé has already been with Luis Enrique's PSG for 18 years and at Atlético there are two: Griezmann (13) and Morata (12). Although no one comes close to Harry Kane, who has inherited Lewandowski's number 9 at Bayern and has already celebrated 22 goals with the Bavarian giant.
Barça is overcoming the Pole's downturn, but it needs the goals of the double Golden Boot if it wants to compete until the end for the League and show its face in the cross-over phase of the Champions League, where it only has one. Vitor Roque is young and must acclimatize without pressure. The pressure is on number 9, who has once again gone three games without scoring.
