World footballer Robert Lewandowski: That’s why his father didn’t let him play football at first

Updated on 01/18/2022 at 2:28 p.m

• Robert Lewandowski has been named FIFA World Player of the Year for the second year in a row
• When he was a child, his father didn’t let him play football at first, but then supported him with great effort
• Later, Jürgen Klopp became something of a father figure for Lewandowski and enabled his breakthrough

More current news about FC Bayern can be found here

Robert Lewandowski can call himself the best soccer player in the world for another year. The FC Bayern Munich striker was named FIFA World Player of the Year for the second time in a row on Monday evening.

“Everything that happened last year, the Bundesliga record, I would never have dared to dream of it. If you had told me that a few years ago, I would not have believed it,” said the 33-year-old.

Lewandowski comes from a sporting family. But there was a time when his father wouldn’t let him play football at all. And maybe that’s one of the reasons why the goalscorer is now the superstar of his sport.

Lewandowski’s father was European champion in judo

His father Krzysztof was junior European champion in judo and also a sports teacher at his school. Football wasn’t on the schedule back then. “We never played football at school,” Lewandowski recalls in the Amazon documentary “FC Bayern – Behind the Legend”.

The Warsaw-born athlete found it difficult to come to terms with it: “I was so angry at the time and kept asking my father why don’t we play football? He just told me you were training for another sport.”

Little Lewandowski mainly trained with his father in judo. “He was big and strong. I was very young and I was always on the ground,” he recalls. It was only after that that the time came when Lewandowski was allowed to focus on football: “Then he told me for the first time that you were ready for football with the flexibility.”

The body control, which may also result from the judo training at that time, is one reason why Lewandowski is considered to be possibly the most versatile striker in the world.

When he was allowed to focus on football, he received a lot of support from his parents. “What my parents did for me means a lot to me,” he says. “After work, they would always take me to training. It sometimes took an hour there and an hour back.”

At the time, his parents were often asked why they put so much effort into their son’s soccer training: “They didn’t necessarily want to do everything so that I could play professional soccer. They just wanted me to be happy with what I was doing .”

Robert Lewandowski: Heavy stroke of fate as a teenager

Shortly before Lewandowski made his professional debut, his father died from a serious illness. It was a heavy blow for the then 16-year-old.

“When you’re a boy there are certain things that you can only talk to your dad about. Stuff about growing up and becoming a man,” he wrote in a post for theplayerstribune.com. “After he died, I often wanted to talk to him about these things. There were so many times I wished I could just call him, just for 10 minutes. But I couldn’t.”

A conversation with Jürgen Klopp brought about the turning point

Lewandowski moved to Dortmund in 2010, but initially struggled under Jürgen Klopp. “I had the feeling that Jürgen wanted something from me, but I didn’t really understand what,” he explains. A groundbreaking conversation between Klopp and Lewandowski brought about the turning point.

“My German was still not the best. But thanks to the few words I knew and his body language, we understood each other. We had a great conversation.” Three days later he scored a hat-trick against FC Augsburg. “It was a mental thing. And I think it had something to do with my father.”

The reason: “My conversation with Jürgen was one that I wish I could have had with my father.”

Krzysztof Lewandowski did not see what a unique athlete his son has become. Nevertheless, Robert Lewandowski believes that his father registers this in a different way. “My father looks at me from above before I go onto the pitch,” says Lewandowski. “He’s still supporting me. I’m sure of it.”

Sources used:

• Amazon Prime: FC Bayern – Behind the Legend
• theplayerstribune.com: The Movie