Lynx Apollo Hero of the Week: Robert Lewandowski

Following his absolutely heroic display in last night’s mauling of Real Madrid, Robert Lewandowski is our Lynx Apollo Hero of the Week.

First things first, have a look at his masterclass against Madrid, we don’t think you’ll mind.

Born in 1988, the 24 year old is considered to be one of Europe’s hottest footballing properties and rightly so. Even before his virtuoso display in the first-leg of the Champions League semi-final last night, Lewandowski was the target of some of the tops clubs in the European leagues, including Manchester United and Juventus.

Rumours now suggest though that he’s most likely to follow his Dortmund team-mate Mario Goetze to Pep Guardiola’s Bayern Munich, having supposedly already signed a pre-contract with them.

Plying his trade in Poland up until 2010 when he signed for Borussia Dortmund, Lewandowski was consistently the top scorer with various clubs he played for; Delta Warsaw, Legia Warsaw, Znicz Pruszcow and Lech Posnan. In fact, as the earlier clubs he played for consecutively acheived promotion, Lewandowski was each  league’s top scorer for four seasons in row. Well, there was a season when he was second-highest scorer but I think we can forgive him that.

He also scored on his debut which is always a special occasion for a striker, even if it was against San Marino. Even my granny scored against them on her debut.

He signed for Dortmund for a fee of €4.5 million in 2010 (he of course scored on his debut) but things could have been so much different, both for him and for a certain Lancashire football club.

As we already reported, Lewandowski had been invited to come and watch Blackburn Rovers play against Everton with a view to signing for Rovers but, Mother Nature intervened with the eruption of the easily-pronouncable Eyjafjallajökull and all hope of a transfer was scuppered due to the massive resulting ash cloud that covered most of Europe.

Deflated after Poland’s early exit from Euro 2012

Lewandowski later come to even more people’s attention though during the European Championship’s last summer, playing in Warsaw in the opening match against Greece, scoring the first goal of the competition and duly was named Man of the Match. He played in all three games for Poland in the tournament, as the co-hosts crashed out of the group stage with two points earned. Still though, he had made his mark.

Named the Bundesliga Player of the Season in 2011-12, Lewandowski already has 14 goals in his last 12 league appearances and is surely on course to win the Player of the Season accolade yet again.

In the meantime though, JOE already can’t wait for next week’s second-leg and we’ll be hoping for yet another Madrid masterclass from Robert Lewandowski.

If you want to be a big a hero as Robert Lewandowski, you could try scoring at least four goals in a Champions LEague semi-final, or, an even better idea is to be the first Irishman in space. Head over to LynxApollo.ie and sign up to see if you’ve got what it takes to leave a man, and come back a hero.