Bayern Munich striker Robert Lewandowski has credited former Borussia Dortmund coach Jurgen Klopp with making him a better striker.
Lewandowski, 27, arrived in Germany at the age of 21 in the summer of 2010 from Polish side Lech Poznan, with Klopp having spent €4.5m (then £3.6m) on the forward. However, he did not impress in his first season and could not displace Paraguayan Lucas Barrios from the central role.
But Klopp, now in charge at Liverpool, moved the Poland international back into a No. 10 role and Lewandowski insists that it was good for him, despite his initial protests.
"Borussia first expressed an interest after my first year in Poznan," Lewandowski told the November 2015 issue of FourFourTwo magazine. "When I left after the second season, I wanted to take the next step -- but suddenly I was playing in a No. 10 role. I was quite mad because I wanted to play up front.
"It was only in the following year that I realised how much I had learned while playing in that position. I told myself: 'You have become a better player.' Then I realised why the coach had asked me to play as a No.10; he made me a more complete player."
Having moved to Bayern Munich in 2014 and netted 44 goals in 67 Bundesliga appearances for the German champions, Lewandowski is seen as one of the best strikers in the game, but believes there is still room for improvement.
"Whenever you think something is good, you've lost the chance to make it better," he added. "Maybe it's true that I don't have a glaring weakness, but you always have to work on every aspect of your game, not just on the things you do less well.
"If you think your finishing is good and stop practicing it, then you're finished. There is no perfection in football. You must always systematically try to improve."
Lewandowski netted just eight goals in 33 games in his first season for Dortmund, but soon showed his true class and ended with a total of 103 in 187 games for the club before moving to Bayern.
"It was such a big change for me, coming to Germany," he said. "It was the first time I was so far away from home, 700 miles. The first few months were hard. I had been prepared for that -- I knew this kind of thing could happen and that I had to hang in there and stay positive. But it's still not easy."
Fellow Poles Lukasz Piszczek and Jakub Blaszczykowski helped him through his first few years at the club, but Lewandowski also revealed that it was being able to speak the language that ensured he would stay in Germany.
"They were a great help during the first six months," he added, "But I knew I had to learn German. All I could say was danke and a swear word. It just makes life easier if you can understand what people are saying. So I learned the language all on my own, and then life was a lot better."