FC Barcelona allegedly asked Robert Lewandowski not to score any more goals to avoid paying a bonus to FC Bayern. Now the Pole speaks out.
Did FC Barcelona actually ask Robert Lewandowski not to score any more goals so that the club wouldn’t have to pay bonus payments to FC Bayern?
Rumors about this absurd-sounding demand have been circulating for a while, and now Lewandowski himself has spoken about it – and not denied the rumors. On the contrary.
“There are things I don’t want to talk about. I have great respect for Barcelona and the people who work there. I was aware of the club’s situation. There were many other problems that needed to be solved for the good of the club,” Lewandowski said in an interview on the YouTube channel of Polish journalist Bogdan Rymanowski.
Afterwards, the Pole became a bit more specific: “In short, it was a bonus, and everyone knows that at the time, Barcelona was closely watching every Euro, and it was no small matter. For me, it didn’t change anything. I have no problem with it, but it was on my mind, and I wondered whether I should score a goal or not.”
However, Lewandowski left open whether he ultimately consciously complied with the board’s request and intentionally did not score any more goals.
As a reminder: Journalist Sebastian Staszewski reported in his Lewandowski biography “Lewandowski. Prawdziwy” (“Lewandowski. The True One”) that the Barca board approached the Pole two matchdays before the end of the 2022/23 LaLiga season and allegedly asked him not to score any more goals.
Barcelona was already confirmed as champions at that time, and Lewandowski had 23 league goals. If he had scored two more goals, bringing his season total to 25, the Catalans would have had to pay FC Bayern Munich an additional bonus of 2.5 million euros.
A circumstance that the financially strapped FC Barcelona absolutely wanted to prevent. Whether consciously or unconsciously: Lewandowski delivered and did not score against RC Mallorca and Celta Vigo, even though he was on the field for 90 minutes.