Robert Lewandowski's first days with Borussia Dortmund would not have been easy, had his then coach, Jurgen Klopp, worked to change that through a "bet" that remained with him for a long time.
Lewa joined Dortmund in the summer of 2010 after his stardom rose greatly with Poland's Lech Poznań the previous season, when he scored 21 goals and provided 8 assists in 34 matches in all tournaments.
But the atmosphere in Germany was very different from Poland, and Lewandowski clearly had difficulty adapting at Signal Iduna Park.
Lewa remembers this difficult period by saying, "My first months in Dortmund were very difficult. I could hardly speak a word of German. The climate was always cold and rainy, and the intensity of Klopp's training was very high."
He added, "I was desperate that I would be able to leave my mark at this club, so Klopp wanted to challenge me."
He continued, "He bet on me during my first months there. If I scored 10 goals in each training session, he would give me 50 euros, but if I didn't, I would be the one to pay him."
As for what happened after that and caused the suffering to end, “In the first weeks I always paid him 50 euros a day and he laughed, but after months the situation changed, until one day he said enough is enough! Now you are ready.”
He concluded, "In fact, I was not ready yet. Matches are different than training. I started the season on the bench and then started playing more in the second half of the season."
After that, the Polish striker became one of the legends of Dortmund, as he led the team to win the Bundesliga twice and the cup once, and reached the Champions League final.
Lewandowski scored 103 goals with Dortmund in 187 matches in all tournaments, before leaving in the summer of 2014 for free to rival Bayern Munich, staying with them until the summer of 2022, after which he moved to Barcelona.
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