Artem Dovbyk netted a hat-trick to pip Alexander Sørloth and become La Liga’s top scorer but this was a story of the collective.
Sometimes the least important things matter most, small moments that make sense of it all. A last-minute penalty in a 7-0 win on the final day, scored against the worst team around – long since relegated, reduced to 10 men, with a reserve keeper in goal and coach that’s leaving – elevated Artem Dovbyk above everyone. The last shot of the final Friday of the season took the Girona striker to the top of the Pichichi charts. The first shot of the final Saturday – off target by his closest rival for the award Alexander Sørloth – kept him there for ever, legends made of him and those who carried him, countryman and team mate Viktor Tsygankov standing holding a lightsaber to the sky.
Dovbyk’s 77th shot of the season, more than anyone, was simple enough. Left footed from the spot, it sent Marc Martínez – the Granada goalkeeper playing his third top flight game aged 34 – the wrong way; it also took the Ukrainian to 24 goals, one above Villarreal striker Alexander Sørloth in the only thing still in play on the final weekend. The following day, as the final Saturday kicked off, Girona’s players met for lunch still nursing hangovers. They watched together as Sørloth took his last shot, pulling up injured to leave Dovbyk as top scorer, one teammate marking a historic season for all of them.
Sørloth had lasted just 14 minutes. That shot, his first of the early afternoon game at Osasuna, was an opportunity to claim an award he had pursued like a T-1000. Sørloth had scored four in the previous game, nine in the last six, 15 in 12. But it hit the side-netting and he hit the floor, holding his hamstring. Forced to withdraw early, he headed straight down the tunnel and out of sight, applauded all the way, everyone feeling for him. “He’s sad: you get your first shot, right where you’re so accurate and you get injured, it’s a pity. He deserved the Pichichi,” said the Villarreal coach Marcelino García Toral. “When his shot went where it did, I thought something must have happened.”