After all, it was always about him and him alone, his goals, his happiness, his personal awards and how best his team-mates could help him win them. He was not completely satisfied with “how the team supported me. Immediately after the last game I was angry, I was disappointed in my team,” Lewandowski complained to ESPN after the 2016/17 season – he was fighting for the top scorer lost to Dortmund’s Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang. With no less than 30 hits, most of which were laid on him by his teammates.
Heynckes had to put his foot down
Or how “Lewy” snubbed the then Bayern coach Jupp Heynckes a year later when he refused to shake hands with the popular and successful coach after a mixed performance in the 3-1 win against 1. FC Köln. Heynckes had vehemently defended the attacker, who was then in a short-term performance slump, against criticism. “I didn’t find it that funny at the moment of substitution,” said Heynckes after the action – and addressed a word of power to the dissatisfied: “Because: I’m the boss – and nobody else.”
Anyway: The “appreciation” was and is always an issue. That “appreciation” that was recently missing in more and more contract negotiations, a disgusting embellishment of completely insane salary demands, presumably thought up in a dark workshop for player consultants.
Short-sightedness that is difficult to bear
Lewandowski’s legacy at Bayern consists of his goals and the titles he helped win. Counting. Not more. It was never more, and it would never have been more. His memorial in Munich never had a firm, immovable foundation, perhaps even becoming a little more shaky with every record of truly beloved club legends that he broke. It was never a real love affair, as my colleague Patrick Mayer wrote here, between the Pole and the German record champion. It’s just not enough to squeeze yourself into Krachlederne for the annual and inevitable Oktoberfest photo shoot – but the players and club haven’t been able to get any closer in eight years. They won’t get any closer in Barcelona either.
Secondly – and most frustratingly, football 2022 is the football of the players and their advisors – and the clubs who encourage them to wriggle out of existing contracts, ignoring or even condoning the fact that, inevitably, at some point they will too themselves become victims of this monster that they helped to create. There is hardly any way out, contrary to all oaths of steadfastness and declarations of “Basta”.
And yet it will lure you again in the next contract wrangling, this hope for “Not this time”, for “That’s enough”.