Muriqi, the child of the war who worked as a waiter, and is already worth more than Eto'o

Vedat Muriqi

is not the type to be intimidated by a losing streak.

Mallorca's top scorer, with eight goals, hasn't seen a goal since November 9, something that when you're a giant of 1.94 that feeds on goals, you could solve receiving Real Madrid today (2:00 p.m.) at the time of eat.

Muriqi (Prizren, Kosovo, 1994) was a child of the war, and that, he says, "makes you stronger, physically and mentally."

Muriqi, his coach,

, said of him : "He is an ugly and strange creature, you see him and you change the sidewalk."

But also: «There is no way not to love the scoundrel.

Everything great that it is has it from the heart ».

The 7 of Mallorca, 28 years old, is a fairy tale giant with a cracked smile.

A guy who was going to be a waiter, and who at the age of four

.

His mother began putting clothes in a bag, and she told him and his sister that they were going "on vacation."

An exodus to Albania of which he remembers "a caravan of cars, clothes thrown in the street, soldiers and people with blood-stained shirts."

They were, he remembers: "Difficult times, in which my parents suffered (...) I told them that I was hungry, and they answered that

" that the German soldiers gave them.

When the war ended and he returned home, he discovered football at the same time as defeat.

He was five years old when his father took him to see the party he played with his friends, between power outages that lasted forever after the war.

"I'm tired, I'm going to be the goalkeeper," were his last words.

And the next thing he did was "an incredible stop that was greeted with a standing ovation."

He never got up again.

Right at that moment, the Mallorca striker recalls: «The light went out.

».

His uncle, Bahtijar Muriqi, became a father figure to him, willing to raise him up by giving him a job as a waiter at Bahjtijari, a cafe overlooking a roundabout, where the specialty is grilled elongated meatballs.

"You have to work and help your family, he would tell me, and I would answer that I wanted to be a footballer, but he would get angry or laugh, and tell me,

."

Vedat Muriqi taking his first steps as a footballer at Liria Prizren.

His mother, Bledina, became his manager.

She was the only woman who accompanied her son to training with Liria Prizren.

She the one who

to dedicate herself to serving meatballs and playing soccer.

And whose main task during those years was to hide it from her uncle.

"He told me that he would be a great footballer and I believed him," it is explained in the documentary RCD Mallorca.

From Paradise on Amazon.

At the age of 17, Vedat jumped into the Turkish league.

He played for several teams until joining Fenerbahçe.

He scored

, and in the summer of 2000 Lazio signed him for

, becoming the worst moment of his career.

Neither

nor

counted on him.

He then got injured.

He then caught Covid.

"It's also true that when they gave me chances I didn't do well," Muriqi admits.

The fans took it with him and one day Sarri had to stop a training session so they would stop insulting him.

It was time to go out.

Mallorca appeared in the winter transfer window, but Spain, for Vedat, was not an option, being

: "That is something very difficult to assimilate".

But he began "to watch documentaries from Spain and the island," and began to think "that it's just a sport."

When he settled in Palma and began to meet people: "My idea changed from one day to the next", and he asked for a teacher to learn the language as soon as possible.

RCD Mallorca forward, Vedar Muriqi, celebrating a goal. RCD Mallorca

His five goals in all his specialties, with his foot, header, penalty, served to save the club from relegation, and Mallorca ended up signing him this summer, making him the most expensive in the club's history,

, above the 7.2 that

cost .

I start this season by becoming the revelation striker.

He even discovered what it's like to score at the Bernabéu, "something that until then I had only done on the playstation," he says, putting Mallorca ahead in a game they ended up losing 4-1.

It began to sound for Madrid, for Sevilla, for

, and now Aguirre sees him as

: "I have seen him differently and that is why I had a talk with him. I told him that That usually happens to forwards who don't score, they are streaks, sometimes the ball hits your shoulder and you put it in".

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