Robert Lewandowski is keen to finally break the World Cup curse… but the Poland coach is confident the striker will be sacked soon

ROBERT LEWANDOWSKI’s World Cup curse continued against Mexico – but his Polish boss is certain the predatory striker will soon stop shooting blanks in the tournament.

Barcelona’s deadly striker, 34, has scored a whopping 76 goals in 135 games for his country.

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But he has yet to match in his four World Cup appearances and missed a penalty in Tuesday’s opener against Mexico, which ended 0-0.

Poland coach Czeslaw Michniewicz has no doubts it won’t be long before Lewandowski gets back to what he does best and helps him end his hoodoo against Saudi Arabia on Saturday.

Although he has hinted it is up to the legendary striker whether he wants to continue taking penalties after his miss against the Mexicans.

Michniewicz said: “We spoke to the whole team and debriefed the whole game against Mexico. I spoke to every single player.

“In terms of penalties, Robert is still number one.

“Of course, as a striker, he will decide whether to shoot or pass to someone else.

“He feels ready to score for Poland.”

Once a target for Blackburn Rovers while still playing at home, Lewandowski has scored an incredible 344 goals in 375 games for Bayern Munich.

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He joined Barcelona in the summer, where his rate is even closer to a goal a game with 18 lootings in 19 games.

His World Cup record of zero is all the more curious – but teammate Jan Bednarek says that the striker currently only has one thing on his mind.

Defender Bednarek, on loan at Aston Villa from Southampton, added: “Robert Lewandowski is our captain, he’s a striker, he wants to score as many goals as possible but for him the most important thing is the welfare of the team. He wants us to win.

“He hides his pride in his pocket and is really focused on working as hard as possible.

“He doesn’t care if he scores or not, he wants us to win the game.

“He has his individual goal, but I’m convinced he puts the success of the team first.

“This is the best striker in the world. I hope he leads us to victory. I don’t know if he will score or not, but the most important thing is that we win.”

Michniewicz admitted some of his players may have been intimidated by the situation in their standoff with the Mexicans.

But he doesn’t think that will be an issue against the Saudis, who have made tournament history so far after their shock win over Argentina.

He added: “We want to score goals, we’ll be bolder, maybe the stage fright of the first game paralyzed some people to a certain extent, but that won’t be there anymore.

“We’re going to have a good game, I believe in that. We’re ready to play our style. We know what advantages Saudi Arabia has, what players they have.

“They beat Argentina and we were level with Mexico, but I think we’re equal teams. We will fight to the end to get out of our group.”