Robert Lewandowski explains Pep Guardiola's role in Barcelona transfer

Robert Lewandowski has revealed that playing under Pep Guardiola at Bayern Munich was a key reason behind his move to Barcelona this summer.

After pining for a move to the Catalan club for months, Lewandowski eventually got his wish recently, signing a four-year deal at the club.

Speaking to Diario Sport ahead of Barca's La Liga opener vs Rayo Vallecano on Saturday, the prolific forward discussed Guardiola's influence on his decision to sign for the club, stating: "Guardiola’s philosophy and his style for caring for and managing the team was like bringing Barcelona to Bayern Munich.

"Xavi is very similar to Guardiola. They were both sixes and they worked together. They think about football in the same way. With that in mind, Barcelona was the only option for me. It was great preparation.

"I didn’t talk to Guardiola before signing. But when I was with him at Bayern it was like a great preparation to come to Barcelona one day.

"All the staff were Spanish and there were eight Spanish players. During that period I had a very good relationship with Thiago and Javi Martinez. Both of them congratulated me when I signed for Barcelona."

Lewandowski also revealed that his wife, Anna, also had a huge role to play in the forward moving to the Camp Nou: "It’s clear that we have to decide everything together. We had been talking about this possibility for weeks. We’ve never closed ourselves off to new chapters, we wanted a new challenge.

"We know how quickly time passes in the career of an elite athlete and we wanted to do something new, something big. It’s not something that happened overnight but a process of maturation."