Vedat Muriqi's rise to a Copa del Rey final with Mallorca

"If I saw me at night on a dark, empty street, I would cross over too," Vedat Muriqi says. Mallorca's striker from Kosovo, the man whom coach Javier Aguirre calls "a big, strange ugly beast" and most people call the Pirate, a 6-foot, 4-inch forward with a face that has been lived in, who strikes fear into defenders' hearts, starts laughing again. Which he does a lot. "One plus one is two, eh. I am ugly," he continues. "Ugly, but attractive."

"The difference," he says, "is that you can be very handsome but when people talk to you you're a clown, you're stupid, you can't put together two words. But I am not that. I am very ugly but when I talk to people they change their minds, they see it." It's an interesting distinction and it is immediately borne out. Muriqi is fantastic, fascinating company. As his coach also put it, he might look like someone you would try to avoid, but "he can really play, and there's no way you can't love the bastard." Intelligent, and immensely charismatic, he is the kind of person you want on your team: funny, engaging, and generous.

And, yes, tough too, that's true. A man, a boy, who learned the hard way, and now appears completely in control of everything. At the end of Mallorca's Copa del Rey semifinal, Muriqi was the first to stand alone on the spot as the game reached the shootout. Not scared of anything, he scored, of course. Now Mallorca stand just 90 minutes away from a first trophy in 21 years (live Saturday on ESPN+, at 4 p.m. ET), only the second in their entire history. For Muriqi -- 14 years, nine clubs, and three countries after he set out -- it would be a first.

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ESPN: The Copa del Rey would be your first title. Is that a liberation?

Muriqi: To be honest, I don't feel pressure these days. And I won't feel pressure [in the final], either. I am almost 30 years old. I know how to manage myself, and how to "manipulate" myself. Of course, it's 50,000 people and when you walk into that [stadium] to play a final, when it's 90 or 120 minutes and that's it, nothing else, then of course you're going to get a bit nervous, but I can manage that. Something will happen, I know that I will tremble a bit, but I can handle that so I don't think I am going to have much stress.

ESPN: Where does that ability come from? You seem so at ease. Were you always able to control those emotions, to handle the pressure? Mallorca is the place where you have shown your best form, by far.

Muriqi: I think that it is explained in one word: experience. The more important games you play, the more you can live with the pressure. You know have played big games, you have won and you have lost. You know, you learn it on the way, through those moments you lived.

ESPN: You went to play in Turkey very young, leaving home alone. You made your debut in Albania as a teenager. You have played for all sorts of different clubs in different countries. Does that play a part?

Muriqi: I think my fortune was that throughout my career, I took every step one at a time, not two or three. Imagine a kid who is 17 signing for Real Madrid for €50m. I think about the father and I think: what is he going to say to his son who earns €10m a year? You can't say anything. You can't tell him off, send him to his room -- he kicks you out the house. And that kid can't understand or appreciate things the way I do because his first contract is at Madrid and it's already €10m.

It's very difficult to really value what you have. Kids take that first step and then they call because they don't know how to manage it all. You go to Madrid, have a couple of bad years, go somewhere not as big but you still feel like a Madrid player and you drop, and drop, and drop. I feel happy to have done step by step; I think that's why I have managed my career well.

ESPN: Is the nearest you have come to that kind of pressure when you moved to Lazio for €20m?

Muriqi: I felt pressure there, yes. In a way, I felt it because they had spent a lot of money and I had this feeling: "I have to do something." It was my fault, eh. I was saying, "Bloody hell, they're not giving me opportunities. How can I show what I can do if they don't let me play?" That kind of thing. But then when I did play I didn't do anything, I didn't make the most of those chances. It was my fault. Especially the first year: I played almost every game. 30 or 35 games. 20 minutes, 45 minutes, 60, 70. And nothing came off, you lose confidence, you lose everything. And this is football: you're not doing it, so you have to go. You learn from that, and that makes you.

ESPN: So does life, and yours has been hard. You have said before that you saw things in the war that no human should see. Your family was forced to flee, there were fifty of you in a tiny place, almost nothing to eat. You started to work while still as a kid. Your father had passed away...

Muriqi: Straight after the war. A heart attack. Pffff. He was playing football, with his friends and then...

ESPN: That might have turned you away from football; this is the sport that took your father from you.

Muriqi: I have asked myself that same thing many times. I wonder about it a lot, even today. I was a kid who loved football and someone who always tried to take the positive from everything, even the worst moments. And I said: "OK, I am going to be a footballer because he was a footballer and I am going to follow him." I think it's because of that.

ESPN: Did you imagine this could become a career?

Muriqi: Never. In my country then, football was just a hobby. When I said I was going to be a footballer, my uncles laughed. They said: "No, you have to work." I was working from a very young age [in a restaurant with my uncles]. There was a point where I had to choose. I would have been about 14. I had to choose between football and school because work was not a question: I had to do that come what may. School, football, work: two things could fit but not three. And work was definite.