Barcelona forward Robert Lewandowski looks ahead to retirement – “I’m not afraid to finish my career” | OneFootball

Robert Lewandowski continued to be linked with a move away from Barcelona, now that he has entered the final six months of his contract. The Catalans are ready to move on from the 37-year-old, who has been a fantastic servant in the years since he arrived from Bayern Munich in the summer of 2022.

Lewandowski, who scored in Barcelona’s weekend win over Espanyol, is unlikely to be offered a new deal, which would mean that he goes in search of a new club. Another option is retirement, and as he told the High Performance podcast (via MD), he has started to prepare himself for life after football.

“I’m not afraid to finish my career because I’m starting to prepare for it, to prepare things that I can do after football. I know that football is a very important part of my life, but football is not my whole life, especially now.

“When I was young I didn’t think about this because I only had football, football and football in my head, but now I know that I am very close to finishing my career. I don’t know (how many years left): one, two, three, maybe four, I don’t know, but I don’t have pressure. If one day I listen to my body and feel that something has changed, then I will be ready to finish my race.”

Image via David Ramos/Getty Images

Lewandowski: I was brought to Barcelona as a mentor

Lewandowski also spoke on his Barcelona arrival in 2022, during which he was asked to act as a mentor to the club’s younger players.

“At Bayern the mentality was different because we had more experienced, tougher players. When I joined Barcelona, I saw a lot of young players who needed to be tougher on themselves. The club told me that they needed someone like me, who could teach them that being at the top is not just one or two or three weeks, but also what you do off the top is very important. What you do in the gym, how important it is to work hard every day. But then, when I met people, when I showed them that the culture is different from Germany, I started to learn from them too. Empathy, everything that surrounds football. And it helped me a lot too.”