Strikers have always been the glamor players in world football, and over the last 20 years, few goal-scorers made as many headlines as Robert Lewandowski and Zlatan Ibrahimovic.
Lewandowski is still going strong as one of the best strikers in Spanish football, likely finishing up his career with Barcelona after forcing a move away from Bayern Munich, where he became one of the greatest strikers of all time.
Meanwhile, Zlatan, who also played for Barcelona briefly, is retired and enjoying the next step in his career as an executive for AC Milan, one of his former clubs. In fact, Zlatan played for all three powerhouses of Italian football, but perhaps his period was a largely overlooked tenure in Paris as the first face of the Qatari project before the arrivals of Neymar and Kylian Mbappe.
Although Lewandowski is still adding to his resume, let’s take a look at how the Polish international’s career stacks up with the brazen Zlatan.
Goal-scoring
Comparing Robert Lewandowski and Zlatan Ibrahimovic as goal-scorers isn’t as simple as comparing the number of goals they scored, because both players have participated in a different number of matches – and Zlatan began his career seven years before Lewa did.
Both Ibrahimovic and Lewandowski played in different leagues and, in a way, different era, so the level of competition they faced needs to be taken into context, too.
For now, let’s look at the rate-based statistics. Lewandowski has averaged 0.93 goals per 90 across his career, while Ibrahimovic averaged 0.76 goals per 90 during his illustrious tenure at the top.
But there are two caveats to consider here. The first is that Ibrahimovic’s numbers include two seasons with the LA Galaxy in which he scored 52 combined goals. The MLS is not a top league and is probably one of the easiest professional leagues for an attacking player – even Sebastian Giovinco looked like a world-beater and he was a fairly average starting Serie A forward.
You could make the counterargument that Lewandowski spent the vast majority of his career in an easy league for attacking players, especially with the way Bayern Munich dominated the Bundesliga in the 2010s. But Zlatan also spent his best years with PSG, cooking an even easier Ligue 1.
In the end, Zlatan’s goal-scoring numbers are highly impressive, but Lewa’s are even better. Lewandowski is one of the best pure goal-scorers in the history of this game, and anyone who saw his automatic finishes, including some acrobatic ones, knows this.
Before Bayern, Lewa specialized in solo goals, too, scoring a handful of memorable ones for Borussia Dortmund. Yet Zlatan’s solo goals and acrobatic strikes are even more iconic, including a few solo efforts at Ajax to start his career and this jaw-dropping bike against England for Sweden.
Ibrahimovic scored more aesthetic goals than Lewandowski, but Lewandowski scored more of them, showing a level of finishing prowess that is perhaps only exceeded by Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo.
You don’t shatter Gerd Muller’s single-season Bundesliga goals record with 41 in between seasons of 34 and 35 goals in a 34-game Bundesliga season without being a historically great finisher – forget even just “generational”.
All-around play
Lewanowski never recorded more than seven assists in a single season during his eight Bundesliga campaigns with Bayern Munich, but he’s already retransformed his game at Barcelona to register 15 assists in his first two seasons in Catalunya,
Before joining Bayern, Robert Lewandowski suited the Borussia Dortmund style perfectly by being a great all-around striker, often starting plays with his progressive carrying and frequently creating chances for others, showing the strong interplay that the “point man” at the 9 must under Jurgen Klopp.
Even though Zlatan Ibrahimovic is a physically imposing striker who is famous for his goals and arrogant attitude, it is easy to forget that what made him such a special prospect at Ajax was how light he was on his feet and how technical he was.
Zlatan earned that technicality with hard work on the streets of Malmo, practicing in suboptimal conditions on the pavement. His light touch and eye for the spectacular pass have often been overshadowed in his career, but they truly shined in Paris, where he was able to be “the guy” for the Qatari project at PSG.
Ibrahimovic averaged more assists per 90 over his career than Lewandowski and was particularly strong as a playmaker at PSG, working alongside another big-name striker in ex-Napoli star Edinson Cavani.
The Swedish international had more than 10 assists twice with PSG and once before that with AC Milan. Ibrahimovic averaged more than a dribble per game in two separate seasons with PSG and hit 2.2 per game in his incredible 2011/12 season with Milan.
Comparing career numbers, Lewandowski averaged 3.13 shot-creating actions per game, which is a ridiculous number for a No. 9 who could score 40 goals in a season. However, Zlatan’s mark of 3.84 per 90 is even more impressive and highlights how uniquely gifted and underrated he was as a creator.
Consistency
When it comes to consistency, Robert Lewandowski is, once again, probably second to only the equally unapproachable tandem of Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi.
Since becoming a regular starter for Dortmund in 2011/12, Lewandowski has never scored fewer than 17 goals in a season and has registered at least 5 assists on 9 different occasions.
Meanwhile, Ibrahimovic had 14 seasons with at least 15 goals and was also incredibly consistent in his own right, forging a career that is as impressive as any in terms of longevity.
Yet he is no Lewandowski. Whereas Lewandowski never had a single bad season, Ibrahimovic had a couple of dud campaigns in Serie A. He didn’t even score 10 goals in the 2005/06 season for Juventus, and then he left the club for rivals Inter Milan after the Calciopoli scandal.
Lewandowski has only played for elite clubs at the top of the footballing food chain, including Dortmund when they beat the odds to overcome Bayern as THE dominant team in the Bundesliga – only to lose that status the very moment Lewa left them to join Bayern for free.
Champions League
The Champions League is often the great equalizer when comparing elite players, because it is the benchmark competition in world football that features the best clubs and players in the world going to battle in head-to-head competition over an extended period of time.
There is variability in one given tournament, but across a 10-20-year career, the Champions League ends up being a strong sample, especially when comparing marquee moments in the Champions League knockouts.
Lewandowski has a very strong Champions League legacy. He was the star man for the 2019/20 Bayern Munich side that won the treble, scoring a historically great 15 goals with 6 assists that campaign – the assists total being nearly as impressive as the goals that threatened Cristiano’s record of 17.
Two years later, Lewandowski would score 13 goals with 3 assists in a single UCL campaign. But a decade before that in 2012/13 when Dortmund reached the Champions League Final against the odds, Lewa had his first double-digit goal UCL season with 10, including 5 in an unforgettable semifinal performance to shred an incredible Real Madrid side – turning legendary center back duo Pepe and Sergio Ramos into turnstiles.
Unfortunately, Ibrahimovic has the distinction of being one of the greatest ever players to never win the Champions League, and he’s only ever really had two Champions League performances worth writing home about.
Those were in back-to-back years with PSG in 2012/13 when he had 7 assists with 2.4 key passes per game and then in 2013/14 when he scored double-digit goals (exactly 10) for the first and only time in his career. In both campaigns, PSG were out at the quarterfinal stage.
It doesn’t help that after Inter Milan swapped Zlatan for Samuel Eto’o with Barcelona, they went on to win the treble under Jose Mourinho. It goes to show that as brilliant as Zlatan was as a player and for as many big clubs as he played for, he may not have always performed the best in a team setting, which may have been why Mourinho was so eager to trade him for Eto’o despite respecting Zlatan greatly for his ability.
Team success
Despite his poor Champions League track record, Zlatan Ibrahimovic has achieved a great deal of success with his clubs as a serial winner in league play, including a streak of five straight league titles with three different teams (Inter, Barcelona, and Milan). If you take out Calciopoli, it would have been seven straight titles with four different teams.
Lewandowski won the Champions League once with Bayern Munich and was a mainstay in the competition for a decade between both Dortmund and Bayern, and he has won 12 league titles in his career as a champion with four different clubs.
From 2014 to 2022, Lewandowski always won the league with Bayern and started their record-breaking run of dominance. Then, a year later, he won LaLiga in his first season with Barcelona, helping the Blaugrana dominate the Spanish top flight a year after they were destroyed in the table by rivals Real Madrid.
Lewandowski has been playing for 16 seasons and has not been champion in only 4 of those seasons. Two of those were with Dortmund, one was in his first career season with Lech Poznan at the age of 19, and the other was with the train wreck that was 2023/24 Barcelona, who stood no chance against the literal best team in the world, Real Madrid.
When looking at the full view of their careers, there can be absolutely no doubt that Lewandowski has achieved significantly more success as a team player than Ibrahimovic, even if Zlatan has won plenty of league titles.
Verdict
Although Zlatan Ibrahimovic had a wonderful career with 13 league titles, countless highlight reels, and incredibly underrated all-around play at the striker position, there is little doubt that Robert Lewandowski has crafted the superior career – and it is still going strong as he nears the age of 36 after scoring 19 goals with 8 assists last season for Barcelona.
Lewandowski is the epitome of professionalism. He has dominated European football for years in a variety of roles at striker, producing highlight-reel moments of his own, such as 5 goals in 9 minutes against Wolfsburg or his 5 goals against Real Madrid in the Champions League semifinals.
A champion far more often than not and one of the most prolific goal-scorers in history, Lewandowski is one of the all-time great strikers and even beats Ibrahimovic pretty convincingly, with Zlatan’s lone advantage being a slightly better all-around profile – and that’s only because it was easier for him to dominate Ligue 1 and MLS as a playmaker, whereas Bayern specifically told Lewa to just score goals on a team loaded with playmaking quality.
The managing editor of The Trivela Effect, Kevin has 15 years of experience in digital media. He covered Real Madrid from 2019-2022 for The Real Champs as a site manager. You can contact him at the site’s official Twitter handle @TrivelaEffect or via the site’s official email thetrivelaeffect@gmail.com.