In the First Division, the diminutive Lewandowski has 13 goals in the league with Barça, but he does not have a definite partner to partner with. Having a tandem of forwards in a state of grace is gold for coaches and Sepu, coach of FC Palafrugell, of group 16 of Tercera Catalana, knows it well. He has at his command the most lethal tandem of scorers between the Primera División and Tercera Catalana. They are Arnau Ruiz and Pau Sala, who share 37 goals. His goals make the team dream of being able to recover the Segona Catalana, which they lost last year. His main rival is Bellcaire d’Empordà, leader with one more point and who he will face on February 4.
In all of Catalan football, the records of Ruiz and Sala are only exceeded, in Quarta Catalana, by Ferran Solera and Àlex Gutiérrez, who shared 40, three more, with Unificación Bellvitge B.
From central to youth
Ruiz, settled in the Bisbal d’Empordà for a bunch of years, has the size taken in the category. Currently, he has 20 and during two seasons he scored 35 with Atlético Bisbalenc. After a lifetime in his town’s team – he remains at the club as coordinator -, last summer he embarked on a new destiny: “I wanted a change of scenery and to leave Bisbalenc, having promoted it to Segona Catalana, how it happened”, he remembers. He is 25 years old, started at Castelldefels and Corçà and didn’t discover his goalscoring side until he was a youth player. He played all the basic football as a center, until they tried him as a forward.
He is a corpulent forward, 1.80 meters tall, who is now compared to Haaland and years ago to Tamudo for his parakeet feeling. With Pau Sala he had not agreed on the field of play and the colleague who gives him “centers that are candy” is Juanito Aznar. “Between the ascent with the Palafrugell and the Picxitxi? The rise”, he says. However, he longs to “surpass 35 goals”, a personal record, and is on his way to doing so because the first round is not over yet.
Regional soccer predator
Pau Sala is also completing his first year at Palafrugell and has a long experience, reaching the Primera Catalana, with Guíxols. He has always scored goals, moving from winger to striker. The hook, 33 years old, arrived at Pla i Arbonés backed by the 22 goals scored, in the previous year, with Sporting Vidrerenca and Sant Feliu de Guíxols. Aro, Calonge and Cassà are the other shirts he has worn.
Sala is defined as a player “with a good start, corpulent and I open the game on the wings”. Luis Suárez is fixed and his main assistant is Àlex Alaminos. The white-and-black adds that “teammates sometimes joke about who scores more goals, but with Arnau we have a very healthy competition”. And he is ambitious: “I want to score more than 30 goals and if it can be 40, all the better. The goal, however, is to go up».
