Jupp Heynckes extols Robert Lewandowski after breaking his Bundesliga scoring tally

With his goal in Bayern Munich’s 3-1 win over SC Freiburg on Wednesday, Robert Lewandowski officially passed Jupp Heynckes’s scoring tally in the Bundesliga. He had equaled Heynckes’s record with his brace in Bayern’s emphatic 6-1 win over Werder Bremen at the weekend, but his goal at the Schwarzwald-Stadion took his total tally to 221, surpassing Heynckes’s 220. Lewandowski is now third on the all-time goal scorer’s list in the Bundesliga behind Gerd Muller (365) and Klaus Fischer (268).

Speaking about Lewandowski’s new milestone achievement, Heynckes highlighted the Pole’s professionalism, ambition and fitness levels (SportBild):

What impresses me about Robert Lewandowski is his professionalism, ambition, passion, bite and fitness. He is an absolute world class player, especially this season. It was a privilege for me to have worked with him. He deserved to outperform me in the eternal list of goalscorers.

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Even more impressively, Lewandowski has reached the mark of 221 total league goals during his time with both Bayern and Borussia Dortmund in only 306 games, while it took Heynckes 369 games to reach the 220 tally with both Hannover 96 and Borussia Monchengladbach. Gerd Muller reached his all-time leading tally of 365 goals in 427 games while Klaus Fischer reached his tally of 268 in 535 matches, so Lewandowski has quite a bit of time before he’s played as many matches as either of those two.

The Polish ace also currently leads the race for the 2019/2020 Torjäger-Kanone title having already bagged 19 league goals, but he is closely followed by RB Leipzig’s Timo Werner, who’s scored 18 goals after his recent brace against Dortmund. The next best tally behind Lewandowski and Werner is Fortuna Düsseldorf’s Rouwen Hennings, who only has 10 goals.

Having scored 30 goals across all competitions already this season, it’s been yet another season of milestones for Lewandowski. At the rate he’s performing, the question of whether or not he can break Gerd Muller’s single season league scoring record of 40 goals looms large. The Polish international still has 1 game left in the hinrunde and the entire ruckrunde left to try and achieve the feat, but his main goal will surely be to help Bayern lift another meisterschale and make a strong run in the Champions League.

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