Scoring 23 Goals and Getting Relegated

The Pirate's best year wasn't enough to keep Mallorca in La Liga for another season. Vedat Muriqi undoubtedly had the strongest season of his professional career, scoring the most goals and playing the most minutes. It was an impressive year, yet he missed out on two major goals: World Cup qualification and staying in the top flight with Mallorca. Two heavy blows in what was otherwise the best year of his career.

The striker from Prizren joined an elite club of players whose exceptional individual performances couldn't save their teams: La Liga forwards with over 20 goals for relegated clubs. This is the clearest proof that football is a team sport—and such occurrences have been rare in La Liga's history.

Before Muriqi, there were only three such instances, as reported by "As": Enrique Castro Quini with Sporting in the 1975/76 season (21 goals), Fernando Morena with Rayo in 1979/80 (21 goals), and the sole case in the 21st century—Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink, who scored 24 goals in the 1999/2000 season but couldn't save Atlético Madrid from relegation.

A bittersweet taste fills Vedat's palate, as this year he also experienced another tough collective setback with Kosovo. The young republic, which was only admitted to FIFA and UEFA in 2016, came close to World Cup qualification in a playoff, where they narrowly lost to Turkey.

"We've been through a lot, but the whole team suffers," he stated that evening in Pristina. Words that the Kosovan captain could easily repeat in Palma. As the numbers show, the year couldn't have been more prolific for the Kosovan forward.

The striker carried the heaviest goal-scoring burden for a team in Europe, accounting for 22 out of 43 goals, or 51.16%. This is the highest percentage in Europe's top five leagues, surpassing other in-form strikers like Igor Thiago, Ante Budimir, and even prolific stars such as Erling Haaland and Kylian Mbappé.

All this comes with a rarely seen indicator of efficiency and danger: he is the La Liga player who most frequently converts his first shot of a match into a goal. One shot, one goal, until he reached ten goals this campaign. The striker managed to rank among Europe's most distinguished forwards in terms of efficiency, even exceeding the expected goals predicted by advanced statistics.

Mallorca enjoyed one of Europe's best strikers but failed to convert all his successes into enough points.