Robert Lewandowski should be bracketed alongside Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo in any conversation about the world’s best forwards, according to David Alaba, who saw his teammate comprehensively outmanoeuvre Chelsea in Bayern Munich’s 3-0 win at Stamford Bridge.
Bayern ran riot in the second half, Lewandowski applying the final blow by converting a cross from the electric Alphonso Davies. But the two assists he had supplied for Serge Gnabry, the first a particularly unselfish lay-off when he could have been excused going for goal, showed another side to his game. Alaba said the 31-year-old, who has scored 39 times for Bayern in all competitions this season, belonged in the most exalted company.
“He is a world-class player and a world-class striker,” he said. “We all know that he can score goals and he showed today another side of himself by putting assists. We know he is very important to us and we are grateful to have him in our squad. He shows it every weekend, I guess. He is one of the best, and maybe the best, striker in the world. He scores goals in almost every game and, of course, I think he deserves to be at the top and spoken about with those guys [Messi and Ronaldo].”
Such a dominant Bayern performance sparked suggestions they are ready to win their first Champions League since 2013. They seem well over the hump of a rocky start to their campaign, which saw Niko Kovac replaced as manager by Hansi Flick in November, and Alaba suggested they had defied expectations to recapture their best form.
“I think three months ago nobody thought we would be here at this point,” he said. “We showed that we are back. We are very confident, keep going, keep rolling, and this is our goal at the moment – to go from game to game and be successful.”
Alaba, who said any focus on Bayern’s defeat by Chelsea in the 2012 final was “a thing the media came up with” and that it had not entered the dressing room conversation, urged caution before a second leg that appears to be a formality. “We know in football that absolutely anything can happen,” he said.