This article is the first of a two-part piece covering the development of Robert Lewandowski across his time in Germany. Do not expect a closed ending here.
Football hath written tales the literary mind would deem cliché, but these tales persist through the ages not as story but as history. However, when one peels back the curtain of the factual history of it all, the layer underneath reveals a narrative and forces beyond the material or easily perceptible. History has figures, stories have characters, with personal struggles and motivations rather than seemingly moving to the inevitable human need for change and oh, the grass simply MUST be greener on the other side…
Robert Lewandowski is a historical figure in the annals of the sport, but today Lewandowski is the protagonist of an almost decade-long journey to the top of Europe, pieced together by numerous coaches and figures who each added small parts to an already expansive game that turned Lewandowski from a rough-around-the-edges mobile striker with some decent technical qualities into an all-conquering monster of the mental, physical and technical, leaving defenses in the dust for fun.
I’ve no battery on my phone: The nature of development under coaching
And I was sorta hoping maybe you could help me find my way home.
With every distinct coach comes a distinct coaching style, and with training, personnel and game-plans tailored to that coaching style, players develop identities within the game-plan that tend to warp their attributes and develop them as players. This is a simple albeit un-succinctly explainable fact of football which often makes the point seem more profound than it actually is. It is not. If you’re taught sociology by a professor who subscribes to Marxist views, you will inherently hold some Marxist views too, whether you feel like you subscribe to that point of view or not (I most definitely did not write this in the middle of a sociology class while the professor was discussing a Karl Marx quote). One needs only to look at the development and growth trajectory of a player who has played under a singular coach for an extended time to see their playstyle evolve and adapt to better fit the coach’s tactical style. Sometimes it need not even be an extended period of time, as simply the change of tactical style after a player joins a new team can seemingly instantly unlock completely new dimensions to their game.
There are numerous coaches who all imprint themselves onto the players they work with. Pep Guardiola tends to develop players with technical advantages into great possession-retainers with the ability to make the ‘correct’ decisions on the ball 99% of the time to box an opposition in metre-by-metre until there is no more pitch left to retreat to. Carlo Ancelotti tends to develop players into versatile units, capable of switching positions and finding each other while switching positions seamlessly. Mikel Arteta’s players are usually physically imposing but combined with Arteta’s coaching turn into technical machines, executing build-up patterns with the ability to affect all three phases of play no matter what position the player inhabits (see also: David Raya’s playmaking abilities aiding Arsenal in build-up but also especially when on the counter).
However, Robert Lewandowski’s coach at Borussia Dortmund, Jürgen Klopp, differs from these coaches in this distinct manner, and it’s a massive part of his success. Yes, Klopp does have a tactical identity, but rather than the principles that some coaches follow, Klopp has barely any distinguishing qualities that are the ‘signature’ of a Klopp team. Rather than shaping the players into a style he prefers, Klopp lets the players naturally grow as they are, and evolves the system into the players at hand. This is most visible now in hindsight where after nine years at Liverpool, the players Klopp worked with for all those years still do not have a singular tactical identity that they can all be categorised within, but rather they have become more mature, jagged versions of their younger selves. Joël Matip developed from a ball-carrying centre-back with decent potential into an elite defender who loves to bring the ball out himself. Mohamed Salah developed from an inside forward with great ball-striking and amazing agility into an older, matured interior winger with the abilities in movement to compact play into small areas where his qualities lend him an advantage.
Lewandowski was laid in Klopp’s lap a clearly gifted striker with decent technical ability and a great mind for space but some defects in his mobility, as he often relied on his speed to make up for gaps in his play. Klopp set the ball in motion for Lewandowski’s development for the next decade, as Dortmund transitioned from the high-speed counter-attacking football into just high-speed football, which was helped by Lewandowski developing into a stronger player both physically and technically, as well as gaining some fundamentals in possession but not a lot more beyond the exaggeration and growth of attributes Lewandowski had already shown a proclivity towards. The perfect platform for a young player to grow into a great player, and Lewandowski took full advantage of it, growing into an elite level striker, possibly one of the best players in the world already, all by the age of 24. However, just before his 26th birthday, Lewandowski took the jump, crossing the line that non-German media and fans believe to be some ‘forbidden door’ when in reality such sideways transfers are commonplace and just part of the German culture, and joined Bayern Munich.
I’m learning to fly, but I ain’t got wings: The principles of movement under Guardiola
Coming down is the hardest thing.
Lewandowski, armed with a good base of fundamentals, began the first phase of his metamorphosis under the tutelage of Pep Guardiola. The Spaniard is perhaps characterised by his tendency to re-tool traditional strikers into build-up pieces that play almost as second-line attackers behind more direct forwards patrolling the half-spaces, but Lewandowski (and now Erling Haaland) stand as the two primary exceptions to this rule. While Haaland has shown some signs of being a pseudo-no9 at times especially out of possession, he is still used as a target striker due to his technical limitations especially while facing goal. However, Lewandowski is a very different kind of player — as the kids say nowadays, he is a better ‘footballer’.
Lewandowski evolved into a far less direct and explosive threat, toning down some of his more vertical tendencies to facilitate play in advanced areas and maintain the ball within them rather than trying to blow past defenses to latch onto a ball or quickly attempting to recycle into a deep position if the attack does not immediately break into a dangerous area. This style which hinged on maintaining pressure in advanced areas rather than trying to quickly slice a knife through the defense was pivotal in Lewandowski learning to time his movements more carefully and think, and is perhaps the most important software update the Goal-inator 4100 ever received. No longer a quick-witted runner with the ability to score on the break, Lewandowski was now a world-class striker with the physical, technical and most importantly mental ability to retain the ball and keep a defense panicking for long periods of time rather than shocking them. The 2015/16 season in particular was a highlight, a year where Lewandowski started slow but eventually became Bayern’s best player, not only scoring 30 goals in the league but also facilitating the attackers around him with his enhanced ability to process situations and think about them, beginning a partnership with Thomas Müller which flourished in years to come.
Acting brave and courageous: The ideas of Ancelotti and Heynckes
…ain’t advantageous for health and safety, so when we say run the jewels, just run ‘em baby, please don’t delay me.
Prepared with excellent raw abilities germinated by Klopp and even better fundamentals curated by Guardiola, the next step of Lewandowski’s metamorphosis was perhaps his most imperceptible and abstract but also the most important: it was moving with purpose. Guardiola taught him to think and to affect play outside of being a static striker, but now it was time to take it a step further. Lewandowski had to learn how to be an attacker that moved out of dangerous spaces and become a true creator and facilitator beyond the basic principles of a ‘modern striker’.
Ancelotti brought to Bayern with him his principles of putting players into units where they interact directly with each other as parts of a whole rather than having individual pieces moving around to create space, a style that often results in players becoming versatile and adapting to different roles outside of what may be considered their natural position. A big part of this is Ancelotti’s attacks, which often consist of several fluid players interchanging their roles with every attacking situation rather than set positions that everyone falls into — see also: Real Madrid in recent years with their numerous combinations involving Jude Bellingham, Rodrygo, Federico Valverde and Vinícius Júnior exchanging places and roles in different game states to better utilise space.
Lewandowski adapted beautifully, adding a whole new dimension to his play with the ability to move out of central positions and aid players breaking into those zones off his back. It was the birth of Lewandowski the playmaker, and while conventional statistics do not showcase such an uptick in playmaking, it is because rather than being the focal point of attack he was the facilitator for others’ final third playmaking, timed to perfection with the downward trend in Arjen Robben and Franck Ribéry’s performances due to their advancing age and the requirement for the new generation of wide players to have a player they can rely on to open spaces for them to operate in. Lewandowski’s movement specifically opened up spaces in the centre too, where Thomas Müller and Thiago Álcantara found great success in moving the ball through those areas and receiving the ball in those areas from Lewandowski himself.
Under Jupp Heynckes, Lewandowski continued to develop these traits with some fundamentals from Heynckes, who often used strikers as off-the-ball pieces with lesser input in front of goal compared to traditional strikers in teams of similar quality and profile. This was important as Lewandowski’s out-of-possession qualities had somewhat atrophied under Guardiola, but this refreshment of training in such situations helped Lewandowski become a far more able recover-er of the ball through better positioning and understanding of when/when not to press and the physical techniques involved in such movements, i.e. the adjustment of cover and pressing shadows in response to different opposition build-up structures (see also: Guardiola opting to set Haaland and Kevin De Bruyne up in a faux two-striker system off the ball so that opposition midfield double pivots aren’t free to receive when one of the forwards decides to press).
After receiving an education in almost every aspect of the game important to a top-level striker in a top-level team, Lewandowski seemed ready to take on the world, but there were lessons he was yet to learn before finally transforming into the best player on the planet. Niko Kovač, Hansi Flick and Julian Nagelsmann were yet to make their mark. Even at the age of 30, Lewandowski had a ceiling still untouched.
What do you think of this piece? How do you think these coaches changed the way he played? Let us know your thoughts in the discussion below.