Lewandowski take note! Bayern's incredible record of replacing 'irreplaceable' No.9s
Robin Bairner
- Updated: 9 Mar 2022 18:19 GMT
- 4 min read
Robert Lewandowski's reticence to sign a new contract with Bayern Munich is starting to attract frustration at the Allianz Arena.
The Pole has already struck 40 goals this season, reaching the mark courtesy of a hat-trick in Tuesday's 7-1 dismantling of Red Bull Salzburg in the Champions League.
Nevertheless, Bayern hero Mario Basler launched an attack on Lewandowski, suggesting that he is a diva who is looking for the club to bend to his every whim.
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Jurgen Klinsmann
After wowing English football fans with diving goal celebrations - and indeed goals - for Tottenham Hotspur in the 1994/95 campaign, Jurgen Klinsmann was a stalwart of the Bayern side who ended a three-year wait for the Bundesliga title in 1997.
When the Germany World Cup winner returned to Italy with Sampdoria in 1997 with 48 goals in 84 games under his belt, Bayern fans might have worried where their goals would come from.
They needn't have: Giovane Elber arrived that summer, forming a brilliant strike partnership with Carsten Janker, and the pair were a matter of minutes away from firing Bayern to Champions glory against Manchester United in 1999 - something they made good on against Valencia in 2001.
Claudio Pizarro
Lewandowski (336) and Elber (139) are the only two non-German strikers to have scored more goals for Bayern than the evergreen Peruvian, Claudio Pizarro (125).
Now a club ambassador, the 43-year-old won six league titles in two spells with the club, which sandwiched spells with Chelsea and Werder Bremen.
The first time he left, in 2007, Bayern moved quickly to acquire Luca Toni from Fiorentina, the Italian going on to score 58 goals in 89 games. The second, in 2015, the Lewandowski era was already well underway.
Miroslav Klose
Toni wasn't the only man to help assuage the absence of Pizarro. Before Lewandowski, there was a time when Bayern kept more than one world-class striker on the books. Toni spent three seasons alongside Miroslav Klose, who concluded his Bayern stay in 2011, the year after the Italian returned to Serie A with Roma.
The quintessential fox in the box, Klose arguably did his best work for Germany, for whom he is his nation's all-time top scorer with 71 goals. His 53 strikes in 150 games for Bayern are not to be sniffed at, though, and neither are his six major honours.
Mario Gomez
Unlike Klose, Gomez arguably did his best work for Bayern rather than Germany. Still a formidable scorer for his country, Gomez was the long-term replacement for Pizarro and Toni. He was fundamentally the reason both were allowed to leave.
Signed from Stuttgart in May 2009 for around £30m, Gomez plundered his 113 goals for Bayern at a rate of one every 99 minutes he played before leaving for Fiorentina in 2013.
Mario Mandzukic
Gomez was allowed to leave due to the form of Mario Mandzukic, who kept him out of the starting line-up for much of his final season at the Allianz Arena. A relative snip at £10m from Wolfsburg, Jupp Heynckes' faith in the Croatian was repaid and then some in his two years at the club.
Mandzukic scored 22 goals in all competitions - three of them in the Champions League - as Bayern won the continental treble in 2013 but left for Atletico Madrid in 2014 with Pep Guardiola's style "not fitting" with him.
Robert Lewandowski
Lewandowski's style fitted to Guardiola's and every Bayern coach since, and few could forget his record five goals in nine minutes against Wolfsburg in September 2015. If he does leave, Bayern have a stellar track record of finding goals - and world-class No.9s - as a matter of course.
