The domestic seasons across Europe will rapidly be drawing to their conclusions and the race for Europe’s Golden Shoe is still open. Liverpool’s Mo Salah is the Premier League’s top scorer with a 31 goal haul and that leaves him also as the front-runner for the Golden Shoe, as he is a couple of goals better off than his major challengers.
Here we take a look at the remaining matches that the main contenders for this season’s award have to face. The Golden Shoe is based on a points system per-goal, which in turn is based on the difficulty level of a player’s league. For example, Lionel Messi is in the Spanish top flight is going to face tougher opposition and therefore it is going to be difficult to score goals than Bas Dost is going to do playing for Sporting CP in Portugal’s top flight.
So in that instance, each of Messi’s league goals are worth two points each while Dost’s goals are worth 1.5 goals each simply because of league quality. This is done to level the playing field because players from weaker leagues are going to find goals a little easier to come by. A the time of writing Benfica’s Jonas sits as the top scorer in Europe but again, playing in a weaker league, his tally of 33 goals at 1.5 points per goal leaves him well back of the likes of front-runners Salah and Messi who earn two points per goal.
Mo Salah 31 Goals = 62 points
Remaining games: Stoke (h), Chelsea (a), Brighton (h)
It has been a remarkable season from Salah and he just doesn’t look as if he is going to be slowing up at all. He just keeps producing the goods as we saw against his former side Roma in the first leg of Liverpool’s Champions League semi-final. There are easy games to come from Liverpool in the league, but you wonder with the Champions League within sight if he is going to get rest time on the domestic front with Liverpool having locked in a top-four finish anyway. Still, he has the advantage and leads Golden Shoe betting.
Ciro Immobile 29 goals = 58 points
Remaining games: Torino (a), Atalanta (h), Crotone (a), Inter Milan (h)
It has been a tremendous season from Lazio’s Immobile who just hasn’t shown any signs of his scoring form drying up at all. He is part of the reason, a large part of why Lazio are the top scorers in Serie A this season. It’s a 29 goal haul from the Italian and while his club are a long way back in the title race he may well have done more than enough to have bigger clubs come knocking in the summer. It’s a tricky run in that they have, as they have lost against Torino already this season and they drew with both Atalanta and Inter Milan. The game against Crotone should be easy enough, but Lazio continue to create a lot of chances and Immobile has one game more than Salah to top up his season’s haul.
Lionel Messi 29 goals = 58 points
Remaining games: Deportivo (a), Real Madrid (h), Villarreal (y), Levante (a), Real Sociedad (h)
Messi has to be the biggest threat to Salah in the race for the Golden Shoe. Not only does he have more games left to play, but he doesn’t have any extra distractions in Europe as Salah still does. He should be right there in the mix given his scoring record for the season. Barcelona have their domestic league title in the bag and while there are a couple of tough games still to come for the Catalans they should be pretty relaxed with things. As we have seen from Man City in the Premier League that should still make them still dangerous. Messi has the games and he has the quality to get all the way to the title and is worth considering in Golden Shoe betting still. He has scored seven goals in Barcelona’s last five league home games.
Robert Lewandowski 28 goals – 56 points
Remaining games: Frankfurt (h), Cologne (a), Stuttgart (h)
This is really the cut-off point with Lewandowski being in contention somewhat but with some work to do. Bayern Munich have already eased their way to the Bundesliga title and Lewandowski has had a big part in their success with 28 goals haul. It is all too easy for the Bavarians on the domestic form and they have scored at least three goals in six of their last seven league games (at the time of writing). They only have the three league games to go for Lewandowski to get enough goals to get to the title and their bigger focus is going to be on their Champions League semi final scrap with Real Madrid. It has been another prolific season for him, but it’s hard to see him making up enough ground now.
Others: Harry Kane 26 goals =- 52 points, Mauro Icardi 26 goals = 52 points, Edinson Cavani 25 goals 50 points, Jonas 33 goals = 49.5 points, Cristiano Ronaldo 24 goals = 48 points.
