Barcelona ace shuts down claims of club interference in his international workload | OneFootball

The FC Barcelona striker Robert Lewandowski was one of the Blaugrana players who was called up by his national team for their two fixtures in this international break.

The Polish international played against Lithuania for a significant part of the game, before he scored the only goal in this match and was substituted shortly after because of discomfort.

Fortunately, he was able to play the last 24 minutes of the second game, against Malta, as well, and finished this game without any physical problems. However, his participation in this Monday’s game as a substitute is raising doubts about a possible agreement between the Polish national team and Barcelona to manage his minutes.

In such a context the Pole appeared in an interview and made it clear that this is not the case, and there has been no contact with the Blaugrana club regarding his minutes.

As SPORT has reported, the striker also revealed that he was not suffering from any injury and only had discomfort in his right foot:

“No, no, no, I haven’t even spoken to anyone from Barcelona about that. There was no such topic at all. No, there’s no injury—sometimes something hurts for two or three days, sometimes it goes away. Everything was fine, and against Malta, I played without any problems.

I feel much better than before this international break because I had some discomfort in the last three games. For example, I couldn’t even kick with my right foot once, not even during warm-ups. But now everything is back to normal, so it’s an advantage that I’ve regained the physical shape I had two or three weeks ago.”

The Polish striker went on to reveal that he had been preparing to remain in his best physical form for the last part of the season:

“I prepared myself for the end of the season to maintain that freshness. I knew that this season would be different from usual because in January there was the Champions League and then the playoffs. I knew that the season would really begin, so to speak, during this period after the international break.

Now the most important matches are coming, so I won’t lie—somewhere in my mind, I was thinking about giving it my all during these last two, two and a half months and maintaining this freshness and rhythm.”

Further commenting on how the international break has helped him overcome his physical problems, Lewandowski said:

“If you want to heal quickly, you have to work. It won’t go away on its own. If you don’t, the pain won’t disappear for up to six weeks, and that’s a long time.”

The veteran forward is set to join Barcelona today as there are only a few days left till the La Liga tie against Osasuna on March 27th. Hopefully, he will be in his best physical form for this and the ensuing games, as he is a key part of Hansi Flick’s team and his contributions can turn out to be decisive for the Blaugranes at the end of the season.