Bayern become first club to score 4,000 Bundesliga goals

bundesliga.com takes a trip down memory lane to see how the previous 3,999 goals shaped the fortunes of the record champions, with goal number 4,001 – scored by Robert Lewandowski – carrying its own significance.

1960s – first goals, first glories

Bayern were not one of the founder members of the Bundesliga, but when they were finally admitted in 1965/66, they soon made up for lost time. Rainer Ohlhauser netted the club's first top-flight goal and went on to score 64 by the end of the decade. However, that was barely half of the haul a certain Gerd Müller struck in his first five Bundesliga seasons – yet he was just getting warmed up. He was one of just 13 players used in the entire 1967/68 campaign, in which Bayern became the first side to win a Bundesliga/DFB Cup double.

1970s – The Müller years

Of Bayern's 4,001 goals to date, the 1970s delivered a significant proportion thanks in no small way to Müller. He struck a total of 235 as Bayern rivalled Borussia Mönchengladbach for silverware domestically. Forty of those – still a single-season record to this day – came in the 1971/72 campaign, with 36 and 30 coming in subsequent seasons from the goalmachine par excellence. Behind him, current club president Uli Hoeneß struck an otherwise impressive 86 times, with current CEO Karl-Heinz Rummenigge netting 73.

1980s – Destructive directors

Hoeneß and Rummenigge may be more familiar to many as they call the shots from the director's box at the Allianz Arena, but they were the club's leading lights in the 1980s. Rummenigge scored 89 times before moving to Inter Milan for a then world record fee, with Hoeneß on target 86 times. It was also the decade in which Lothar Matthäus came, saw and scored 57 times.

1990s – Elber's entrance

Until Lewandowski became Bayern's most prolific foreign goalscorer, dislodging Arjen Robben, that record had previously belonged to Giovane Elber, who arrived in Munich in 1997 and struck 38 times in his first three seasons. Mehmet Scholl led the way in what proved to be a comparatively poor decade in terms of goals scored, with 61 – ahead of Alexander Zickler (43) and Roland Wohlfarth (42) and full-back Christian Ziege (38).

Watch: Robert Lewandowski's secrets

2000s – Roy of the Rovers

Bayern gained revenge for a heartbreaking UEFA Champions League final defeat to Manchester United when they won the trophy for the first time in a quarter of a century. Current sporting director Hasan Salihamidzic scored in the penalty shoot-out win over Valencia, and he also struck 23 Bundesliga goals. However, it was Roy Makaay's decade as the Dutchman plundered 78 goals – seven more than Claudio Pizarro and over twice as many as Italian World Cup winner Luca Toni (38).

2010-today – LewanGOALski

Pizarro added 16 more goals after 2010, but this decade undoubtedly belongs to Lewandowski. The 30-year-old's penalty to seal a 5-1 win over Gladbach on Saturday – Bayern's 4,001st all told – took him to 195 in total, 121 of which have come in a Bayern shirt. Thomas Müller's return of 96 puts him second, with Robben's 82 placing him third in a particularly prolific decade for the Bavarians.