Robert Lewandowski celebrated an historic goal for Barcelona on matchday five of the 2024/25 UEFA Champions League.
The Poland star converted an early penalty against Brest to put his side ahead and take him to an impressive 21 goals in 19 games for the Catalans in all competitions this season. He got his 22nd shortly before fulltime to put a seal on the victory.
The first of the two was a particularly momentous one for the 36-year-old as it also moved him onto 100 Champions League goals in his storied career. He is only the third man to reach that milestone, the first two unsurprisingly being Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi.
Lewandowski is some way off breaking Ronaldo's all-time record and, given his age, it feels unlikely he will be able to do so. However, one particular stat shows that, in a sense, he is actually outperforming the Portugal great and his long-time rival Messi.
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Lewandowski's Champions League goal rate better than Messi and Ronaldo
Ronaldo leads the all-time standings with 140 goals in 183 appearances for Sporting CP, Manchester United, Real Madrid, and Juventus. Messi is next on 129 goals in 160 games for Barcelona and Paris Saint-Germain.
Lewandowski is third on the list with 101 goals in 125 matches for Borussia Dortmund, Bayern Munich, and Barca.
That gives Lewandowski a goals-per-game rate of 0.80, which is actually superior to that of Messi (0.79) and Ronaldo (0.75) in the competition.
Robert Lewandowski currently has a better UCL goal-per-game ratio than the 🐐’s pic.twitter.com/DdXuagp7eJ
— Football on TNT Sports (@footballontnt) November 26, 2024
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If he were to maintain his current rate, Lewandowski would match Ronaldo's total of 140 goals if he played a further 50 games in the competition.
While his age makes this feat unlikely, the striker fully deserves to be held in the same high regard as the two men considered by many to be the GOATs of modern football.
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