Thomas Müller on Robert Lewandowski's exit from Bayern Munich

It’s evident that with Robert Lewandowski leaving Bayern Munich have lost their best goalscorer. The Bavarian team face a new era without that reference point in attack and the rest of their players must take a step forward to reinvent themselves, like Barcelona did without Lionel Messi. The most recent to speak about the Polish striker‘s departure was Thomas Müller, his good friend in Munich in an interview with Bild am Sonntag.

“All sides decided that Lewandowski would leave the club," explained Muller. "There were good reasons for it but without a doubt we don’t know what to expect when a player, who has always scored 30 to 50 goals per season, is now no longer with us on the pitch.

He recognised that the team's game “even if it was unconsciously" was based on feeding the ball to Lewy, "no plan existed to play just for him but when you know you have a player like that it’s what you do. Now things will change and it’ll be exciting to see how the new attack develops“.

Conscious of how sensitive the issue is of the Polish striker leaving, Muller wanted to make it clear that the “objective has to be that we don’t sit here within six months and say, we’re lacking goals, we have a problem. We’re not going to play with 10 men just because Lewy has left. Now there will be chances for other players. Maybe we’ll score less but it does not mean that we are not going to be successful as a team. For example, Mario Mandzukic replaced Mario Gómez in 2012. Mandzukic did not get the numbers Gomez had but we won the treble and were invincible as a team.“