Robert Lewandowski’s penalty early against Brest at Montjuic last night saw him achieve a historic milestone as he became only the third player in the history of the game to touch 100 goals in the UEFA Champions League.
After Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi, the Polish striker is now just the third individual to sit on that accomplished list and even scored his 101st goal in the competition later in the night.
A breakdown of goal distribution
Of the 101 goals Lewandowski has scored in the competition, 69 of them came in the group stages of the event and the remaining 32 in the knockout stages.
Of that, 19 were in the Round of 16, six in the quarterfinals and seven in the semifinals. Notably, Lewandowski has never scored in a UEFA Champions League finale.
A year-by-year breakdown of his goal distribution also provides valuable insights into the player’s consistency over the years.
Goals per year
Robert Lewandowski now has 101 goals in the UEFA Champions League. (Photo by Alex Caparros/Getty Images)
Lewandowski scored once in the competition in 2011-12 but then burst to life in 2012-13 with 10 goals to his name.
Over the next five seasons, he kept up his consistency with 6, 6, 9, 8 and 5 goals to his name respectively.
In 2018-19, he scored 8 times before racking up a stunning 15 in Bayern Munich’s UEFA Champions League winning run in 2019-20. In his final two seasons at Bayern Munich, he scored 5 and 13 times in the competition respectively.
Lewy moved to Barcelona in 2022-23 when he scored 5 times in the European event and then again netted 3 times last season. This season, he is on fire once more with 7 goals to his name in just five games so far.
Notably, the striker has scored 22 of his 101 goals under Hansi Flick and it is clear that he thrives under the German tactician. In fact, he has not scored more goals in the competition under any other manager with even his record under Jurgen Klopp being 17 goals.