Barcelona forward Robert Lewandowski has named his toughest opponent – and surprisingly, it is a Real Madrid legend.
Lewandowski, 36, is widely considered to be one of the best strikers of the past two decades.
He burst onto the scene in his native Poland at Znicz Pruszków and Lech Poznan before joining Jurgen Klopp’s Borussia Dortmund in 2010.
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His 30-goal tally helped Klopp’s side to the 2011 Bundesliga title before assisting the Germans to the Champions League final in 2013 when they were beaten by Bayern Munich at Wembley.
His consistent goal-scoring earned him a move to the Bavarians, and he continued to rack up the goals in Munich, scoring 344 times in 375 games before swapping Germany for Spain - moving to Barcelona in 2022.
The Poland international was part of the 2022-23 La Liga-winning side, but in 2023-24, he failed to help Barca capture major silverware, failing to reach 20 league goals for the first time since 2014-15.
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However, this term, he is firing on all cylinders with 12 La Liga goals in ten games, including two in Sunday evening’s 5-1 win over Sevilla – making it ten strikes in his last six appearances.
Barca - who are top of the league - will no doubt compete with rivals Real Madrid - who sit second going into next Saturday’s ‘El Clasico’- for the La Liga title this time.
Despite the obvious rivalry, Lewandowski previously explained how a Los Blancos legend was his ‘toughest opponent’.
"The toughest opponent? There are plenty of good defenders, but it has always been great to have duels against Sergio Ramos,” he told GOAL in 2019.
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“I was always happy to be able to compete with him,” he added.
You may recall Lewandowski scoring four goals in Dortmund’s 4-1 win over Real Madrid in the 2013 Champions League semi-final first-leg.
On that occasion, Ramos was playing but as a right-back, with Madrid fielding the centre-back pairing of Pepe and Raphael Varane.
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So, in fairness to Ramos, he was not directly up against Lewandowski as much as he would’ve been if he was in the centre of the defence.
Overall, the pair have played against eachother 11 times with the Polish forward edging the record with five wins compared to Ramos' four plus two draws.
Lewandowski has previously discussed the time that Ramos and then-Real Madrid teammate Cristiano Ronaldo tried to ‘persuade him’ to join them in the Spanish capital in 2017.
When questioned in 2020 whether the pair tried to tempt him to join Madrid following a Champions League fixture in 2017, he replied: “Yes!”
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But no such deal materialised, and Lewandowski continued to win trophies with Bayern.
Topics: Robert Lewandowski, Barcelona, Real Madrid, Sergio Ramos, El Clasico, Champions League
Luke Alfred Davies