They are the sharpest shooters in the Bundesliga and are making a habit of extended jousts.
Bayern Munich’s Robert Lewandowski, 28, aims next month for his third award as the division’s top scorer, while Borussia Dortmund’s Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, 27, is entitled to feel that, this time, it is he who will finish on top.
A rivalry to liken to Lionel Messi versus Cristiano Ronaldo in Spain? Lewandowski insists there is no such competition with the galloping Gabonese who was once a Dortmund colleague.
Others beg to differ. Uli Hoeness, the Bayern Munich president, recently told Bild-Zeitung that “when Aubameyang scores twice, Lewandowksi goes on red alert.”
It suits Bayern, perhaps, to gee up their admired centre-forward that way. The hunger for prizes at the serial German champions is boundless, and if the club bring in the top-scorer’s award – a replica cannon – they may end up with a monopoly on the domestic baubles.
Bayern on Saturday host Dortmund with a 15-point lead over the club they regard as the second strongest in the Bundesliga.
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Their lead over upstarts RB Leipzig, currently second, stands at 10 points, so regardless of the outcome, a fifth successive title seems destined for Munich.
Nonetheless, when Lewandowski withdrew early from practice on Thursday, the club and player were swift to broadcast that a suspected thigh strain meant in no way his participation against fourth-placed Dortmund was in doubt.
It is a heavyweight game: Prestige, pride, and the duel with Aubameyang at are stake.
The younger man has 25 goals so far in the Bundesliga. Lewandowski has 24. Last season their individual totals finished up at 25 to 30, in the Bayern man’s favour.
In effect, the five goals Lewandowski struck in the space of less than nine minutes as a substitute in a remarkable game against Wolfsburg made the difference.
There have been three Lewandowski hat-tricks in Bayern’s league campaign so far in 2016-17 but Aubameyang has the edge on form, with eight goals from his last six outings. He has just been fined by his club, though, for a breach of discipline.
Aubameyang celebrated his goal against Hamburg last weekend by putting on a mask that carried the branding of a sponsor that is not Dortmund’s official kit-supplier.
The gesture made for striking photographs, and Aubameyang is the kind of performer on whom camera lenses are trained.
Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang. Patrik Stollarz / AFP
In this, he and Lewandowski are chalk and cheese. The Bayern man is an undemonstrative Pole; the Gabonese can be quite the polemicist.
He was left out of the Dortmund team in November as what was widely reported as punishment for breaking a club curfew to attend a party in Milan.
The African Footballer of the Year has a flashy image: he drove an all-gold car at one stage, and has compiled a full portfolio of different hairstyles.
What most catches the eye is Aubameyang’s speed. Lewandowski was startled by it when the young striker arrived at Dortmund from St Etienne in the summer of 2013.
Lewandowski was Dortmund’s centre-forward at the time, the newcomer often employed on the wing.
“I knew what a good player he was from our time together, especially because of his pace,” Lewandowski said. “But what has happened with him since has been an explosion of ability.”
Over a 50 yard dash Aubameyang would certainly leave Lewandowski trailing. But Bayern argue that the man they took from Dortmund in the summer of 2014 is a more ‘complete’ striker than the one Dortmund have cultivated as his replacement.
Lewandowski looks more deft with his back to goal, more dainty operating in small, compact spaces. Bayern, for whom Lewandowski has scored as many goals in three campaigns as he did in four at Dortmund, want plenty more of him, too, and have signed him up until 2020.
Aubameyang, named the Bundesliga’s Player of the Year last season, agreed an extended deal with Dortmund that runs until 2020 two summers ago, but he and Dortmund know he is coveted by major clubs in England and Italy.
Dortmund, who have a Uefa Champions League quarter-final meeting with Monaco on Tuesday, may need to persuade their masked maverick he can win major trophies with his present employers – big team prizes beyond the cannon that goes annually to the top gun in the German first division.
Player of the week: Bas Dost, Sporting Lisbon
Among the contenders for this season’s Golden Shoe, awarded to the most prolific scorer in domestic league football in Europe, are mostly familiar, starry names. Then there is Bas Dost, the Dutchman who has proved his reliable marksmanship in several leagues, the latest the Portuguese top flight, where he is leading the line for Sporting.
Goal Per Game
Dost has a neat 24 goals in 24 Primeira Liga games this season, eight more than the league’s next best, Francisco Soares of Guimaraes, and reassuringly clear, from the point of view of regular watchers of the league who have become wearily accustomed to seeing most of the prizes go to Benfica or Porto, of any striker from either of the league’s top two.
Instant Impact
Dost’s fine tally is the more impressive given that this is a new environment for the forward. He joined Sporting from Wolfsburg with the season already under way, at the tail-end of the summer transfer window, and missed the first three matches of the league campaign. Within an hour of his debut, he was off the mark. Last month, he struck four times in a single match against Tondela - and contrived to miss a penalty in the same game.
First-touch forte
Sporting knew what they were paying for when they committed €10 million (Dh39m) to Wolfsburg. Dost, who made his name with Heerenveen in his native Netherlands and finished top scorer in the Dutch Eredivisie in 2011-2012, is a target man above all, renown as a first-touch finisher close to goal. “At Sporting I get played the passes I need,” he reported to Dutch media last month.
Grateful
For that, he credits the nous of Sporting’s experienced manager, Jorge Jesus. “I have never had a coach who understood so well what I can do and what I can’t do,” Dost said. He is aware he is the type of player who can go in and out of fashion. At Wolfsburg, he had prolific spells, not least in 2014-15, but also periods when he was deemed best used off the bench, very much a Plan B.
International angst
Right now, he is in fashion with his national team having been called up for all the Netherlands squads this season. But his modest haul of 12 caps – and one goal – in the five years since his first call-up reflects changing tastes among Dutch managers. Nor is he part of a thriving team. Dost drew a blank at centre-forward in last month’s worrying defeat in Bulgaria, a result that jeopardises the country’s prospects of reaching the next World Cup.
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