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Robert Lewandowski will stay at Bayern Munich next season, chief executive Oliver Kahn insists, despite speculation linking him with a move to Barcelona.
The Poland international has hit 32 goals in 29 Bundesliga games for Bayern this season, scoring 47 times for his club in all competitions.
Lewandowski’s latest goal came in Bayern’s 1-1 draw with Villarreal on Tuesday, making him just the third player to reach 30 goals in the knockout stages of the Champions League after Cristiano Ronaldo (67) and Lionel Messi (49).
Recent speculation has linked Lewandowski with a move to LaLiga, given his Bayern contract is set to expire in just over a year’s time.
But Kahn, speaking ahead of the Villarreal game, said Lewandowski would be remaining in Munich and the club would be “crazy” to consider letting him go.
“Apparently there is a competition out there to see who brings out the biggest nonsense story about Robert Lewandowski,” Kahn told Amazon Prime Video.
“It is very important to mention that we have a contract that is valid for another season. If there’s something to report, then we’ll do it, too.
“We are not crazy and discussing a change from a player who scores between 30 and 40 goals every season.”
Kahn then insisted the striker would “definitely” remain at the club for another season.
Those words would bring some comfort to Bayern fans who then watched their team bow out of the Champions League following a 1-1 draw with Villarreal, having lost 1-0 in the first leg in Spain.
Bayern have failed to win back-to-back Champions League games for the first time since their 2018-19 last-16 tie with Liverpool, when they drew 0-0 away and lost 3-1 at home.
Meanwhile, no team have suffered more Champions League quarter-final eliminations than the Bavarian giants (eight), and they have fallen in the last eight in consecutive seasons after losing to Paris Saint-Germain last term.
However, Kahn refused to criticise Julian Nagelsmann’s team for their efforts and said the club were “not going to cry”.
“It’s always disappointing when you concede a goal just before the end,” he said after the match. “We could have made it 2-0 before that.
“You can’t blame the team. They put everything into it, tried everything in the second half.
“There are few less pleasant teams to play against [than Villarreal]. To crack this kind of defence, you need a lot of patience, you have to keep running. If there’s one critique, it’s that we didn’t take advantage of one or two scoring opportunities and should have created one or two more chances.
“It just wasn’t meant to be. The team threw everything in. We didn’t lose the battle today [but in the first leg], more commitment and will is hardly possible.
“We’re not going to cry, we’re going to go for it again next year in the Champions League.
“We have a great opportunity to become league champions for the 10th time in a row. No one has ever done that in Europe. We have a nine-point lead over Borussia Dortmund. That’s what we’ll focus on and throw everything into that.”
