Mallorca’s Pirate puts Kosovo playoff pain aside to stun Real Madrid | Sid Lowe

For one magical moment in the sunshine and the spotlight, the roughest man in Spanish football was the smoothest, the toughest, its most vulnerable. With his ponytail and the stubble covering a face that’s been lived in, they call Vedat Muriqi the Pirate and he’s supposed to have the turning circle of a galleon. But here there was grace, all 6ft 4in and 14st 8lb of him moving as if he were wearing slippers, not a pair of size 15s. The first touch, with the left, couldn’t have been softer; the second, with the right, couldn’t have been harder, all that emotion unleashed with the violence. The ball crashed into the net and the Kosovan crashed on to the turf, where he wept.

Muriqi had just scored the goal that may have brought the league title race to an early close, Mallorca defeating Real Madrid 2-1 with his 91st-minute goal a couple of hours before Barcelona went to Atlético Madrid and won in the 89th. But that wasn’t why he lay there, everyone going wild around him. It wasn’t why his face was hidden but his feelings couldn’t be, huge frame heaving. Muriqi was sobbing so hard it was a wonder Son Moix didn’t shake with him; some of the 23,015 inside it certainly did. Teammates came to him, embracing him briefly from behind then leaving him to let it out: first Omar Mascarell, then Sergi Darder, then Johan Mojica.

Mojica helped him up, looked at the camera and said: “For Kosovo.” Muriqi got to his feet, tried to wipe the tears from his eyes, took the Mallorca badge in his hand and pointed at the fans: thank you. No one deserved this more than him, the club said. This was his 19th league goal this campaign – no one has ever got more for Mallorca in a primera season – and it took him to within a goal of Samuel Eto’o as their all-time leading scorer in the top flight. There is a case to be made for him being La Liga’s most important footballer, even its player of the year, not just a cult hero on the island but a hero full stop, but he had been hurting. A few minutes later, Muriqi’s son Orhan stood and waved at the camera at the side of the pitch, then stood there gazing up at his dad as he explained.

Muriqi has never been small, he says: big and old before his time, forced by war to see things that, in his words, you should never see. He was born in Prizren, Kosovo’s second city; his family were forced to flee to Albania, 50 of them in a single room, and almost as soon as the war ended, his dad died of a heart attack playing football with friends. The association could have been too painful to play on but he did, in part to follow his father, even as he was told that there was no future in the game. It was rarely smooth and it hadn’t been lately either, he admitted on Saturday. “And sometimes,” he said, “the emotion and the nerves get the better of me. These two weeks, I have suffered a lot.”

Vedat Muriqi slides in front of the Mallorca supporters after his winner in added time. Photograph: Quality Sport Images/Getty Images

When Mallorca sacked Jagoba Arrasate at the start of March, there was a sense of regret, players turning up for his farewell press conference, saying goodbye to a good man, but there had been a sense of need, too. They had slipped into the relegation zone and, talking to El País, Sergi Darder admitted that fear had crept in, an inhibition. While Darder missed the former manager, the solution in a different context, right now, in this moment, he accepted that they required something else, a different personality: Martín Demichelis was that someone, a manager with the character to say: “I’m in charge,” to impose an authority, to confront conflict face on.

Muriqi, meanwhile, had added that they needed a different style, too. And if it felt a little out of character for him – usually a funny, warm, self-deprecating figure – to be so blunt now and say they “actually played, not like before when we were just defending and running after the ball”, you could understand it from his position. So often a lone striker, a giant asked to turn every punt into a pass, his isolation made his numbers even more extraordinary: he has scored 19 of Mallorca’s 36 league goals. Across the division, only Kylian Mbappé has more. Take out penalties and the Frenchman is a solitary goal ahead, playing for a team that has created 188 more chances.

Éder Militão’s equaliser did not prompt a classic Real Madrid comeback. Photograph: Quality Sport Images/Getty Images

That remark came after the first game under Demichelis, in week 27. That day Muriqi scored and Mallorca led 2-0 only to concede two late, late goals to draw 2-2, La Liga’s other Muriqi, the Osasuna striker Ante Budimir, leaving them in the relegation zone. In week 28, he didn’t score, but Mallorca beat Espanyol 2-1 – if a bit fortunately – to pull out of the relegation zone. In week 29, they lost 2-1 at Elche. In the 92nd minute, Muriqi put a penalty over the bar. Score, and they would have been out of the relegation zone; instead, he missed and they were pulled back in, Elche overtaking them, guilt overtaking him. “I had the opportunity to get a point for my team: these things can happen in football, but at this stage of the season a player with my experience …” Muriqi said that evening, facing the cameras and the weight of responsibility. “I feel it. It leaves a bad taste for the fans who have travelled here and I’m sorry.”

It got worse, he explained on Saturday. The week after Elche, Kosovo beat Slovakia 4-3 but lost 1-0 to Turkey in their World Cup playoff final. Muriqi had played 180 minutes, but will not play in the US this summer. And now back on the island, still in the relegation zone, Mallorca had Madrid, “and against Madrid, we have to be honest, even if you’re at home, you’re putting it down as zero”, he said. Instead, they were 1-0 up through Manu Morlanes, hope handed back to them, only for Éder Militão to score an equaliser with a minute left and everyone knows what that usually brings: the comeback was inevitable, or so it goes.

But there was Muriqi, taking the ball with his left, smoothly spinning to his right and bludgeoning the ball. The shot took Mallorca out of the relegation zone and everything into the net with it, tears flowing, the Pirate in pieces. “I come from missing a penalty in the 92nd minute, then losing a final with my country, denied the chance to go to the World Cup, the dream of my life. We’re 1-0 up, they score on 89 and suddenly, a goal, a great goal, and it’s 2-1,” he said. “From the outside I might look ugly and hard but I’m human, too.”

Talking points

The first episode of the trilogy may be the final chapter of the title race. At the end of their defeat at Son Moix, the Real Madrid captain, Dani Carvajal, sat alone on the bench, which is where he sits most of the time these days, just looking out into space, lost. If it was nearly done then, Madrid not deserving any more than the 2-1 defeat that was a portrait of their season, it was really done a couple of hours later when they watched Barcelona win 2-1 at Atlético Madrid.

OK, perhaps not really, but it’s very close now. On a night when Atlético had Nicolás González sent off for basically not knowing what to do with Lamine Yamal – nutmegged early, he was booked for literally catching the ball the next time the teenager escaped him and then shown a red for desperately wiping him out the time after that – and Barcelona had Gerard Martín sent off only for the video assistant referee to send him back on again, Giuliano Simeone opened the scoring but Marcus Rashford levelled and then Robert Lewandowski got a late and slightly lucky winner, off his chest.

Marcus Rashford equalised for Barcelona against Atlético Madrid before Robert Lewandowski’s winner. Photograph: Bernat Armangué/AP

This was the first of three meetings between the teams in 10 days, and if it was the least important for Atlético with two Champions League clashes coming up, it was hugely significant for the Barcelona. Madrid might have thought this weekend would put them within a point or at least a single game of Barcelona, the title race very much alive despite (or perhaps even because of) them basically being terrible all season. Instead, their loss in Mallorca and their rivals’ victory at the Metropolitano puts Hansi Flick’s side seven points clear with eight games to go. “We are very happy but we don’t celebrate,” the Barça coach said, but no one has ever let a lead that big slip this late.

“What this team are doing is barbaric,” the Getafe coach, José Bordalás, said and he’s not wrong. The Coliseum really could host the Champions League next season.

Watch Toni Martínez’s goal for Alavés against Osasuna this weekend. Now watch it again. Nope, still can’t work out how he did it. Brilliant.