Berlin (AFP)
"He has had the season of his life": Karl-Heinz Rummenigge, Bayern boss, expected the award of the Fifa "The Best" trophy on Thursday to his striker Robert Lewandowski, a working monster who has finally surpassed his own limits and taken on a new dimension in 2020.
Because if the Pole, scorer in series for many years, had to wait until his 32 years to win the supreme individual trophy of "best Fifa player", it is undoubtedly because of his past difficulties to transcend himself on the big occasions .
Without a rival in the Bundesliga (five times top scorer over the last seven seasons), often brilliant in the group stage of C1, he has long clashed with Bayern - which he joined in 2014 - on the glass ceiling of the towers to direct elimination in the Champions League.
Since his anthology quadruple in the semifinals against Real Madrid in 2013 with Dortmund, he had never even - until this year - been decisive in the cleaver meetings of the spring.
Reserved but proud, Lewandowski sometimes suffered from this discrepancy between his talent and the perception the rest of the world had.
In 2016, he finished 16th in a Ballon d'Or won by Ronaldo and expressed his frustration on Twitter with a line of “laugh to tears” emoticons, before treating the France Football competition as a “cabaret”!
- Chelsea atomized -
Everything changed in early 2020. In the round of 16, he atomized Chelsea all by himself with three goals and four assists in two matches (3-0, 4-1).
He then scored and scored during the demonstration against Barcelona in the quarter-finals (8-2), then against Lyon in the half (3-0), before giving way in the final to Kingsley Coman, author of the victorious goal against Paris SG (1-0).
He finished the year with a personal total of 15 goals, two units behind Ronaldo's all-time record "CR7".
And in the historical classification of the competition, he has just caught up with the Spanish legend Raul in third position, with 71 goals.
Still far behind Ronaldo (134 goals) and Messi (118 goals).
"Robert is the most complete player in world football", had launched Lothar Matthäus, Ballon d'Or 1990, even before knowing the result of the vote.
"He took a step up last season and got even better. He also became one of the leaders in the dressing room of FC Bayern," added the former glory of the Bavarian club.
UEFA in October already awarded Lewandowski its own trophy for best player of the year.
Having won an extremely rare quintuplet with his club (Cup / Championship / Champions League / Super Cups in Germany and Europe) has obviously contributed to raising the Munich player to the level of the greatest.
He still has to win the Club World Cup in February to complete a historic Grand Slam.
- "My husband is a machine" -
An instinctive scorer but a hard worker, the man who was spotted at the age of 21 by Dortmund while playing at Lech Poznan, Poland, has never stopped improving.
Over the years, he has diversified his game. Able to win to come and participate in construction, very strong back to goal, diligent defender if necessary, he is much more than a simple finisher.
His rigor in preparation, his diligence in training, his concern for food, are also cited as an example at Bayern and beyond.
In the locker room, his teammates nicknamed him "The Body" for his body sculpted by weight training.
"My husband is a machine," recently launched his wife Anna, a former Polish international karate, who serves as his private coach and watches over his diet.
"It is an absolute model of professionalism, a condition for staying at the highest level for a very long time," predicts Oliver Kahn, the former Bayern goalkeeper, Rummenigge's designated successor at the head of the club.
© 2020 AFP