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This weekend’s FC Barcelona vs RC Celta is a duel between the competition’s current top scorer and the most recent winner of the Zarra Award.
Robert Lewandowski has adapted to Spanish football at great speed and is the current top scorer of LaLiga Santander, with an incredible nine goals in his first seven games. He has earned a lot of praise for his performances, but this weekend he’ll line up opposite against another LaLiga Santander superstar: Iago Aspas. It will be the first time that these two talented forwards face each other.
Aspas is the most recent winner of the Zarra Award, the trophy awarded to LaLiga Santander’s top-scoring Spaniard each year, and last season he equalled David Villa’s record of winning the prize four times. He has already scored five goals this season and will try to add another at the Spotify Camp Nou on Sunday.
Aspas has long established himself as a striker to be reckoned with, earning a move to Liverpool in 2013 and then spending a season on loan with Sevilla FC. But it wasn’t until returning to RC Celta at the start of the 2015/16 season that he truly discovered his scoring prowess.
In his first spell with his hometown club, Aspas’ best goal return in the top flight was 12 strikes, a tally he immediately improved upon in his first season back in Galicia, scoring 14 times to help fire RC Celta to sixth place in LaLiga Santander and send them into Europa League.
The Galicians enjoyed some of their greatest moments as a club when they played in Europe at the turn of this century – the famous EuroCelta team – and, led by Aspas, they had another memorable campaign in continental competition, reaching the semi-finals of the 2016/17 Europa League, only narrowly losing to Manchester United.
As well as his exploits in Europe, Aspas managed to improve on his domestic form, scoring 19 league goals in the 2016/17 campaign to win the Zarra Trophy for the first time. He did even better in the 2017/18 season, scoring a career-best 22 goals, before netting 20 times in the 2018/19 season to become the first player to collect the Zarra in three consecutive years.
The 2018/19 season was a fraught campaign for RC Celta, but one in which Aspas proved his worth more than ever, almost single-handedly helping the team avoid relegation with a late flurry of goals after returning from an injury. He did the same in the 2019/20 season, with RC Celta again securing survival by the skin of their teeth thanks to his 14 goals. He was also talismanic in 2020/21, scoring 14 times and providing 13 assists.
His brilliant 2021/22 meant he finished as the team’s top scorer for a seventh season in a row, with 17 strikes, a sign of what he means to the club, which he first joined as an eight-year-old, having been born in the town of Moaña, just 20 kilometres from RC Celta’s training ground.
In addition to his enormous talent and talismanic record, his dedication and loyalty to his boyhood club have made him a firm favourite with fans, and last year LaLiga.com readers voted him as RC Celta’s most ‘historic player’ ahead of fellow club greats Aleksandr Mostovoi and Gustavo López.
Sunday’s match throws up a host of fascinating storylines, but none perhaps as engaging as how both sides will look to stop two of the division’s most deadly and talented strikers.
