“His personality. He is the guy who can be like a father, the guy that can help you all the time, but also he's the guy who can try to push you,” Barcelona striker Robert Lewandowski told ESPN.
“This is the guy who you can go to him, speak with him. We are all human, we all have problems. He's not only the coach, he is the guy who... you can learn from him, also [about] life. I learned a lot under him.
"I think that one situation changed my career. It was the first season, maybe the beginning of my second season, at Dortmund.
“I wasn't in good form, I didn't score so many goals. I didn't know what Jurgen wanted from me. After a game that we lost, I went to him directly.
“It was maybe midnight at the hotel. I said: 'I want to speak with you because I don't understand and I don't know what you want from me, what you expect from me'.
“And this conversation was like, I thought that maybe we're going to speak five minutes, 10 minutes, but we were speaking about an hour and a half.
“The most important thing was that I was speaking with him, maybe like a father. And I missed my father because I lost my father when I was 16 years old. Maybe since that time, I couldn't find someone who can talk with me like that.
“Three days later, and remember you cannot change anything in training because you don't have time. We were playing in the Bundesliga and I scored a hat trick and got one assist and we won 4-0.
“That was Augsburg, I think. In that moment I understood that mentality and what you have in your head is so important because I didn't change anything. But I felt some freedom, just like I'm clear in my mind. After this everything changed.
“I don't remember everything, but what I remember is he told me that if I give on the pitch during the game, like 70% of my quality from training, he will be happy.
“From that I understood that what I was doing was enough for him. I had to make the next step to bring this quality into games. This small change changed my life and maybe changed the road [I was on] in my life.”
Lewandowski has gone to become one of the greatest strikers ever to play the game. Even at 34, the Polish striker has 25 goals for Barcelona this season.
