Lewandowski talks Barcelona, Xavi, suspension, chat with Messi, World Cup

With the FIFA World Cup out of the way, La Liga football will resume in Spain in the coming week. And current leaders Barcelona will restart their pursuit of the title with a contest against local rivals RCD Espanyol at Spotify Camp Nou next Saturday.

Ahead of the resumption of the season, star striker Robert Lewandowski granted interviews to two leading publications in Spain in Mundo Deportivo and SPORT.

The 34-year-old discussed several topics during the interviews such as Lionel Messi and his interaction with the Barcelona legend at the World Cup, as well as his three-match suspension in La Liga and the aim for the rest of the campaign.

Talking of Messi, Lewandowski admitted that he desires to play with the 35-year-old PSG star before retiring and even claimed that the Argentina captain is the favourite to win the Ballon d’Or next year.

Further, the 34-year-old Barcelona striker also talked about Messi’s World Cup triumph, stating that the global superstar deserved the success, having had to live under enormous pressure for so many years.

“It’s a dream come true for him. I know the enormous pressure he has been under for many years… Maradona’s history with Argentina,” Lewandowski said.

“He has achieved everything in football, he is the best footballer in the world. And now he’s enjoying it, I can imagine what it means for him and for the country. And how he played! The whole world has seen it.”

During the group stages of the World Cup, Lewandowski and Messi happened to cross paths and the former Bayern Munich icon admitted that the latter is very difficult to play against.

“It’s very difficult to play against him. He is the champion in a very well-deserved way,” he added.

Following that match, Messi and Lewandowski were seen talking to each other for some time. And the Barcelona striker spoke about the chat with the Argentina captain saying:

“I don’t want to say what we talked about, but it was a nice chat. I think this kind of thing you don’t have to explain because it’s private, but it was very nice.”

Further talking about Argentina and their World Cup victory, Lewandowski admitted that he had pegged La Albiceleste as the favourites well before the tournament and believed they would go on to win despite the opening day defeat to Saudi Arabia.

“I said it before the World Cup, that they were the favourites to win it. Whenever anyone asked me, I always said Argentina were the favourites. Even after losing to Saudi Arabia, I was sure they were going to reach the final and probably win it,” Lewandowski said.

Back to training at Barcelona, Lewandowski spoke of how he is looking forward to getting back to club football while admitting that the team had a tough road ahead as they bid to win trophies.

“We have a few weeks to prepare for the next game. I will have two more weeks, but the rest of the season will be very tough with a very long calendar. We start on 31 December and the last game will be in June. We will have a lot of games but you have to be prepared for this kind of tough road,” he said.

While Barcelona resume their campaign next weekend, Lewandowski will not be involved as he is serving a three-match ban for his sending-off against CA Osasuna.

The 34-year-old was seen making a gesture while trudging off the field after receiving his marching orders, which resulted in an additional two-match suspension apart from the one game for his red card.

As he has already explained before, Lewandowski once again highlighted how the gesture was meant for his manager, Xavi Hernandez in relation to the conversation they had before.

“Nothing happened with the referee. He just gave me two yellow cards, that’s all. But the reason I got three matches was nothing to do with the referee, it was to do with me and the coach. That’s all I can say,” Lewandowski said.

“One or two weeks before we had a chat with Xavi and he told me that I had to watch out if the referee gave me a yellow card, but that was just a gesture to express that he couldn’t understand what was going on. We had talked about it and it was something between Xavi and me. I didn’t understand anything,” he added.

Admitting that it will be difficult to miss the matches and watch from the sidelines, Lewandowski said: “It’s difficult because I feel that three games is too much for what I did. That’s for sure. And it’s painful not to be able to play three games because of that.”

Having only arrived at Barcelona this past summer, Lewandowski is happy at the club and wants to stay for as long as he can continue playing at this level.

“I will stay at Barcelona as long as I am fit and hungry for titles,” he said. “We have to have the mentality of a champion.”