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The stats behind Robert Lewandowski’s remarkably prolific goalscoring record

Planet Football •

Robert Lewandowski scored four goals as Bayern Munich thrashed Crvena Zvezda 6-0 away on Tuesday night, but given his form it should come as no surprise.

The Poland international is the top scorer in Europe’s top five leagues as well as the Champions League, and he’s on course to break all kinds of records.

He’s scored in every European appearance, and drawn a blank just once in the Bundesliga so far this season. Here we’ll break down his goalscoring stats to illustrate just how on fire he’s been (extremely on fire).

Champions League

The 31-year-old has already tied his best-ever European campaign, the 10 goals he scored for Borussia Dortmund as they finished runners-up in the Champions League back in 2013.

He needs just one goal in Bayern’s final group stage match against Tottenham to match Cristiano Ronaldo’s record of 11 goals in the group stage. Two, of course, would give him the record outright.

It’s also not unthinkable that he can reach Ronaldo’s overall Champions League record of 17 goals in a single campaign (2013-14) – the Portuguese also holds the record of second and third most goals in one season (16 in 2015-16 and 15 in 2017-18).

Bombardment

Football can be quite a simple game at times, and it’s easy to see why Lewandowski is scoring so much when you consider his shooting stats.

He averages considerably more shots per game in the Champions League than any other player – 6.4 per game, ahead of Cristiano Ronaldo and Karim Benzema (5.0 each).

That’s consistent with his domestic record. He averages the most shots in the Bundesliga (4.2 per game) and is ahead of the Premier League’s top shooter Mohamed Salah (3.6) and Ligue 1’s top shooter Kylian Mbappe (3.9).

The only player to average considerably more shots than Lewandowski in the league is Ronaldo at Juventus. The Portuguese averages 5.7 shots per game in Serie A, but he’s only scored five goals – Lewandowski has more than three times as many.

Bundesliga

The legendary Gerd Muller is undoubtedly the greatest goalscorer in German top-flight history. Der Bomber has scored 365 Bundesliga goals – 97 more than anyone else – and he holds the record for most goals in a season, 40 in 1971-72.

Lewandowski has 16 so far, 12 games into the season. It will be incredibly difficult for him to maintain this form, but extrapolated over the course of the season, he’s on course for 45 goals.

He’s finished top scorer in four of the last six Bundesliga seasons himself, and will certainly be looking to better his own record of 30 goals (2015-16).

Overall records

The most amazing thing about Lewandowski’s campaign so far is that it could be set to get even better. His prolific record has come while Bayern have reportedly been a fractured, unhappy camp, putting in a number of disjointed performances before Niko Kovac was sacked.

But since Hansi Flick has taken over, Bayern – and Lewandowski in particular – have been incredible. An aggregate scoreline of his four games in charge is 16-0, with the striker contributing seven of those goals.

In terms of top-level European football, Lionel Messi holds the record for the most goals in a single campaign – the Argentinian scored a mindblowing 73 goals in the 2011-12 season, 50 in La Liga.

Lewandowski has some way to go to reach that, but with 28 competitive club goals already, he can certainly look to match the other great talent of this era – Ronaldo’s best single-season tally was 61 goals for Real Madrid in the 2014-15 season.

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