Lewandowski wins the Pichichi Trophy in his first season in La Liga! But how did he compare to the league’s biggest star Karim Benzema?

Robert Lewandowski won the league title in his first season in the Spanish La Liga and became the top scorer with 23 goals. How did he compare to the league’s biggest star Karim Benzema?

Robert Lewandowski won the Pichichi Trophy in his first season in Spain

When FC Barcelona announced the arrival of Robert Lewandowski before the season, the question of how the Polish cannonballer would fare compared to Karim Benzema immediately surfaced. Especially as the French cannonballer had the season of his life last year, which saw him win the Ballon d’Or.

However, anyone expecting a tug-of-war between the two cannonballers from the beginning to the end of the season would be sorely mistaken. Lewandowski immediately fitted into the Barcelona squad and topped the scorers’ table right from the start of the competition. After all, he scored an impressive twelve goals in his first ten official games for the Catalan big club.

Karim Benzema, on the other hand, was more troubled by numerous injuries at the start of the new season than he was thinking about the goal scoring crown. He had only played half of the possible games for Real Madrid by the World Cup in December and missed the final tournament in Qatar due to injury.

If the first half of the season belonged to Lewandowski, the second half was more for Benzema. Although he started the new year by chasing down his Polish rival, minor injuries during the month of May prevented him from getting back into contention for the Pichichi trophy.

All in all, Lewandowski won the title of the king of goalscorers in his very first season with 23 goals, which also helped his Barcelona win the league title. Benzema finished second with 19 goals and Espanyol’s Joselu came third with 16.

How did he compare to Karim Benzema?

La Liga – 2022/23

But let’s take a closer look at the comparison between the two elite strikers. Lewandowski scored the aforementioned number of goals in 34 games, whereas Benzema managed his goal scoring tally in 24 games.

In terms of minutes, the Barcelona canon has scored a goal every 124 minutes in the Spanish La Liga, his Real rival every 107 minutes.

All competitions – 2022/23

If we talk about all competitions, Lewandowski needed 46 games to score 33 goals and Benzema scored 31 goals in 43 games. If we were to convert this to minutes again, Lewandowski scored a goal every 120 minutes, whereas Benzema scored a goal every 117 minutes.

This shows that although Lewandowski won the Pichichi trophy for the top scorer in the Spanish top flight, Benzema still has slightly better goal scoring stats. But both men show that despite their advanced age they can still be important scorers for their teams.

Source: La Liga, Transfermarkt