Robert Lewandowski scared of the Bundesliga tax!
FT Desk
- 16 Jun 2022 09:38 BST
- 4 min read
Manchester United's hopes of hijacking Barcelona's move for Bayern Munich star Robert Lewandowski could come to nothing with the player having no intention of moving to England.
Weather did once stop Lewandowski moving to England - a volcanic eruption in Iceland in 2010 grounding his flight to Blackburn when Sam Allardyce was boss at Ewood Park - but that's as authentic as any excuse gets according to the striker's former agent Cezary Kucharski.
Lewandowski has lit up the Bundesliga since, first with Borussia Dortmund and latterly with Bayern Munich, scoring 312 goals in 384 games. But would his goalscoring rate take a hit if he moved to England now?
What is the Bundesliga Tax?
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What began as a notion on Twitter has since been backed up by professional football analysts: on average, a player moving from the Bundesliga to the Premier League can expect to see their xG diminish by 0.07 over the course of a season.
Jadon Sancho and Timo Werner are among the recent examples of players who have struggled since swapping Germany for England, and Kucharski say Lewandowski is scared of becoming another.
"I always heard Robert give a childish explanation that it rains so much in England," he told German TV channel Sport 1. "But I think the real reason was that he didn't think he could be as efficient as in Germany. Robert was really afraid of that."
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With Barcelona struggling to register free transfers Andreas Christensen and Franck Kessie this summer, let alone stumping up €40m for Lewandowski's signature, Paris Saint-Germain have also been floated as a potential destination for the wantaway Pole.
"PSG? I wasn't allowed to negotiate with PSG in the past because Robert's wife didn't want to go to Paris," Kucharski continued. "Maybe that has changed now."
How much would the Bundesliga tax cost Lewandowski?
Lewandowski scored 35 goals in 34 Bundesliga games for Bayern last term, ending the season as the league's top scorer for the fifth consecutive campaign. Applying a 0.07 xG penalty on his output would put his tally at 0.93 per 90 minutes. Assuming a 38-game season, that would still mean 35 goals in the Premier League.
This is not the first time Kucharski has spoken out against Lewandowski. As recently as May he mocked his flirtation with Barca, saying: "Your whole life you want to go to Real Madrid, only to end up at Barcelona?"
Perhaps he just wishes he was in Pini Zahavi's shoes this summer, with Lewandowski set to secure a lucrative move away from Bayern - be it with Barcelona, Manchester United, or anybody else.
The Bundesliga tax might not affect Lewy too badly after all. Like the Eyjafjallajökull volcano, he is a force of nature.
