When the final whistle sounded Monday, Robert Lewandowski lowered his head and stared at the ground to absorb a rush of disappointment from Poland’s opener at the European Championship.
Three weeks after smashing the Bundesliga’s single-season scoring record, a mark that stood almost a half-century, his emotions in St. Petersburg careened in the opposite direction.
This is the dichotomy of Lewandowski’s careers for club and country. For Bayern Munich, he is a piston in the machine. For Poland, he is the machine.
And as the Polish opener demonstrated, no matter how productive one man was over an unmatched nine months for a famous club that hoisted a ninth consecutive trophy, he cannot escape the weight of carrying a spotty national team.