Rarely does a game go by without Robert Lewandowski breaking some sort of record in Bayern Munich colours even now at the age of 33. Here we go through just some of the entries in the record books boasting the name of “the world’s best forward”, as coach Julian Nagelsmann described him.
41 – The Bundesliga’s fabled number for most goals in a season was once 40 after Gerd Müller set a seemingly impossible bar in 1971/72. That was until Lewandowski came along in 2020/21 and scored 41 times in only 29 appearances. That total also earned him the European Golden Shoe for the first time.
42 – Another record that once belonged to Müller is now jointly shared, which is the most Bundesliga goals in a calendar year. Lewandowski has brought up that total from 33 games in 2021. Der Bomber originally set it from 34 matches in 1972.
13 – When Lewandowski scored in the 7-0 win over Bochum on Matchday 5 of 2021/22, he became the first player ever to net in 13 straight home games in the Bundesliga, surpassing the record of 12 once held by Müller and Jupp Heynckes. That run has seen him bag a total of 24 goals.
19 – He scored in 19 competitive club appearances up to that Bochum fixture, surpassing the previous Bayern record of 15 by Müller from 1969/70.
11 – They talk about being quick out of the blocks, and Lewandowski tends to be, having become the first player to score on Matchday 1 of a season for seven straight years. He’s done so a total of eight times in 12 seasons in Germany. But in 2019/20 he kept up that momentum by becoming the only player ever to manage a goal on each of the first 11 matchdays of a season.
4 – He’s finished as the Bundesliga top scorer for the last four seasons in a row, which is a feat nobody has ever before achieved. His goal totals consisted of 41, 34, 22, and 29. In total, he has six Torjägerkanone as the league’s top marksman.
100 – No player with at least 50 Bundesliga goals has scored at a faster rate than Lewandowski. He finds the back of the net on average every 100 minutes, compared to 105 for Müller. His 2020/21 rate was one every 60. For comparison, Der Bomber’s 40 in 1971/72 came at a rate of one every 76 minutes, having played in all 34 games.
0.92 – With 221 goals in 239 Bundesliga outings for Bayern, Lewandowski has the best goals-per-game ratio (0.92) of anyone in history. Even the great Müller (0.85) cannot match that. 295 – Lewandowski went past Klaus Fischer’s total of 268 on Matchday 26 of 2020/21 to move into outright second in the league’s all-time scoring list. After 16 games of 2021/22, he’s on 295 from 366 appearances. Only the late Gerd remains ahead with an ever-decreasing cushion on 365 from 427 games.
120 – Lewandowski also holds the record for most away goals scored in the Bundesliga. His brace against former side Dortmund took him onto 118 and past Fischer’s previous best of 117.
34+15+6 – As Bayern made history in 2020 with their sextuple, so did Lewandowski as he became the first player to win the treble of league, domestic cup, and UEFA Champions League while also being top scorer in all three competitions. He did it in 2019/20 with 34 Bundesliga goals, 15 in Europe, and six in the DFB Cup.
363 – The Warsaw native is almost 100 goals clear of Claudio Pizarro as the Bundesliga’s record non-German scorer. He’s currently second in the list for appearances (363), with only the Peruvian ahead on a perhaps unreachable 490 games.
217 – A strike on the opening night of 2020/21 saw Lewandowski surpass Karl-Heinz Rummenigge’s total of 162 Bundesliga goals for Bayern and move into outright second on the club’s scoring list in the league. He’s on 217 now, with just Müller ahead on 365.
11 – Lewandowski has got at least one goal in each of his last 10 Bundesliga games against Schalke. No other player had ever managed a run of more than nine consecutive games scoring against a particular club.
A six-time winner of the Torjägerkanone award for the league’s top goalscorer, here’s an overview of the records the Polish star striker already had to his name:
2021
- Most goals across Europe’s top five leagues (Bundesliga, Premier League, Serie A, Ligue 1, La Liga) – 41
- European Golden Shoe
- Joint-most Bundesliga goals scored in a calendar year – 42 (equal with Gerd Müller)
2020
- Bundesliga Player of the Season
- UEFA Men’s Player of the Year
- Named Best FIFA Men’s Player in the world
- Sextuple winner (Bundesliga, DFB Cup, Champions League, DFL Supercup, UEFA Supercup, FIFA Club World Cup)
- Top scorer in Bundesliga, DFB Cup and Champions League
- Top assist provider in the Champions League
- FIFA Club World Cup Golden Ball
- Footballer of the Year in Germany
- European Sportsperson of the Year
- Most goals across Europe’s top five leagues (Bundesliga, Premier League, Serie A, Ligue 1, La Liga) – 32
2019
- Most goals across Europe’s top five leagues in 2019 – 25
- Most goals for club and country of any player across Europe’s top five leagues – 37
Bundesliga all-time
- Most goals scored by a non-German player – 295
- Most goals scored by a Polish player – 295 goals
- Record Bundesliga games by a Polish player – 366
- Fastest hat-trick – 3 mins 22 seconds
- Fastest four-goal haul – 5 mins 42 seconds
- Fastest five-goal haul – 8 mins 59 seconds
- Most goals by a substitute in a game – 5
- Fastest non-German to reach 100 goals (168 games)
- Most goals in a calendar year – 42 in 2021
International
- Most caps for Poland (128)
- Most goals for Poland (74)
- Most goals scored in a single UEFA Euro qualification campaign: UEFA Euro 2016 – 13
- Most goals scored in a single FIFA World Cup qualification campaign: 2018 FIFA World Cup qualification – 16
- Most hat-tricks scored in a single FIFA World Cup qualification campaign: 3 (2018 FIFA World Cup qualification)
All stats are correct as of 15 December 2021
