Robert Lewandowski s attitude towards his work at Bayern Munich gives the impression he is staying at the club, coach Julian Nagelsmann believes.
Lewandowski is the leading scorer among players in Europe s top five leagues for a third consecutive season, netting 47 goals in all competitions in 2021-22 after 48 in 2020-21 and 55 2019-20.
He is the only player in Europe to have scored at least 40 goals in each of the past seven seasons.
But the 33-year-old s contract has only a year to run, and he has been linked with a move away from Bayern – most prominently to Barcelona.
Bayern have insisted Lewandowski will not be sold, yet he will be able to leave on a free transfer in 2023 if a new contract is not agreed, denying the Bundesliga giants a huge fee.
However, Nagelsmann does not think Lewandowski intends to quit the German champions based on the conversations the pair have had.
Of course I would like to keep him, he is an important goalscorer, Nagelsmann said ahead of Sunday s game at Arminia Bielefeld. He has a contract. There are conversations.
I never got the impression that he wants to leave. We talk a lot about tactics, and he participates a lot. That implies for me that he wants to stay.
But it s also quite normal to think about your future, especially when you ve been with the club for so long.
Nagelsmann was speaking on Friday, three days after a Champions League draw with Villarreal that saw Bayern eliminated from the competition at the quarter-final stage.
Their failure to reach the quarter-finals in consecutive seasons will have financial implications, but Nagelsmann hopes Bayern will keep investing in order to return to Europe s top table.
It s always a vicious circle, he said. The squad changes, you lose regular players; on the other hand, the income is missing because you don t get that far.
Of course, we don t have the money we would have made from the semi-finals.
You have to decide: do you take a risk, how much do you invest? If you do not take risks, the probability of reaching a semi-final is lower, then again the money is missing. It s always a balancing act.
Now, though, the focus has to be on clinching the Bundesliga title – that is Nagelsmann s message as Bayern aim to move on from the Villarreal game, where Lucas Hernandez and Kingsley Coman sustained muscle injuries that make them doubts against Arminia.
There s a bit of dreariness. We won t have the opportunity to play such games again until a year from now, he said. We have a year to think about it.
But we now have a mission: ideally win the next two games to become champions. You have to turn that dreariness into vigour.
There is the potential for yet another Lewandowski record, too, needing only a single goal to become the outright away scorer in a Bundesliga season; he has 17 on the road so far this term, tied with Jupp Heynckes in 1973-74 and Timo Werner in 2019-20.
Lewandowski s only previous away game against Arminia in October 2020 saw him score twice and assist another in a 4-1 Bayern win.
