The 2021/22 European Golden Shoe race is under way, with the continent’s most prolific goalscorers all vying to win one of football’s most prestigious individual awards.
Bayern striker Robert Lewandowski saw off the challenge of Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo to finish at the top of the European Golden Shoe rankings last season.
READ MORE: Premier League Golden Boot: Current standings and past winners
Lewandowski scored an astonishing 41 league goals from 29 appearances, giving him 82 Golden Shoe points and the highest winning score since Ronaldo in 2014/15.
Manchester United star Ronaldo and Messi – who has moved from Barcelona to PSG – both entered the new campaign expecting to challenge again in the standings for the most goals in Europe.
READ MORE: Who will be the European Assists King for 2021/22?
Messi’s PSG team-mate Kylian Mbappe and a fellow young star in Erling Haaland were also expected to be in the mix to top the Golden Shoe rankings and take the crown from Lewandowski.
Along with Ronaldo, Romelu Lukaku, Harry Kane and Mohamed Salah started the season as the top Premier League candidates, though surprise winners have also emerged in the past.
Keep an eye on this page throughout the 2021/22 season for regular updates on the European Golden Shoe standings.
2021/22 EUROPEAN GOLDEN SHOE STANDINGS
Robert Lewandowski is on the brink of winning back-to-back European Golden Shoe titles.
The Bayern striker scored in his side’s last game of the Bundesliga season against Wolfsburg on Saturday, with his future at the club looking uncertain amid transfer speculation.
Lewandowski remains on course to score the most goals in Europe for 2021/22, having finished the league season with 35 goals to his name from 34 appearances.
Given the Bundesliga season is shorter than the other major divisions in Europe, Lewandowski is now finished while many of his rivals are yet to complete their top-flight campaigns.
But Lewandowski’s strike means he sits eight goals clear of his two closest rivals and the Poland star will surely be confident that he has built a sufficient advantage to secure European golden boot glory once more.
While he fell short of his historic 41-goal total last season, Lewandowski looks unlikely to be caught in the Golden Shoe race.
Karim Benzema has recorded the best league goalscoring campaign that he has had in 13 seasons with Real Madrid, impressively beating the 24 goals he netted in 2015/16.
Having scored against Levante on May 12, the France forward now sits on 27 goals – the highest Primera Division total – and has been a challenger to Lewandowski in these standings for much of what has been a sublime campaign.
But having had recent rests against Atletico Madrid and Cadiz, he is being carefully managed by his team between now and the end of the season as the domestic title is already secured while a Champions League final against Liverpool sits on the horizon.
Lazio forward Ciro Immobile, a former winner of this award, has superbly scored 27 times in the league this season to top the charts in Serie A.
He had scored in four straight league matches before his goalless outing in the 2-0 win over Sampdoria on May 7 dealt a blow to his chances of continuing his late charge even before he had missed Monday’s match against Juventus through injury.
PSG star Kylian Mbappe scored in the comprehensive win over Montpellier and now has 25 top-flight goals this season, putting him top of the Ligue 1 standings. It has been a remarkable year for the World Cup winner, who also has 18 assists.
He is fourth, one goal clear of Leverkusen forward Patrik Schick, Juventus’ Dusan Vlahovic – a scorer against Lazio in the game Immobile missed – and Monaco’s Wissam Ben Yedder, who surged up the standings with a hat-trick against Brest.
That trio are two ahead of the Premier League golden boot race leader, Liverpool forward Mohamed Salah, who has netted on 22 occasions but is losing momentum of late, as well as outgoing Dortmund star Erling Haaland.
Haaland moved with Salah after scoring a farewell goal against Hertha.
Son Heung-min, Lautaro Martinez and Martin Terrier all have 21 goals apiece and are battling to finish inside the top 10 of the prestigious Golden Shoe standings as the league seasons across Europe draw to a close.
For the time being our table below tracking the European Golden Shoe standings will only list players from the top five European leagues, where the winner is most likely to emerge from.
2021/22 European Golden Shoe
Who are the previous European Golden Shoe winners?
Lionel Messi has won the most European Golden Shoe titles.
The PSG forward has triumphed on six occasions, most recently in 2018/19 for Barcelona.
Cristiano Ronaldo is his closest challenger with four career wins, though the Man Utd attacker has not come out on top since 2014/15 when he was at Real Madrid.
Nine players have two awards apiece, including Luis Suarez and Thierry Henry.
Messi holds the record for most goals and points in a season as well. He remarkably scored 50 goals in 2011/12, earning himself 100 points.
Ronaldo has come closest to breaking that, scoring 48 goals for 96 points when he last won the crown more than six years ago.
Argentina forward Messi is the only player in European Golden Shoe history to win the title three years in a row, doing so from 2016/17 until 2018/19.
Ronaldo, though, is one of only four players to have won the title with different clubs. The others are Luis Suarez, Diego Forlan and Mario Jardel.
Robert Lewandowski became the first Bundesliga winner since 1972 last season, with his 41 goals being the best tally for six seasons.
That came after Ciro Immobile won the 2019/20 European Golden Shoe, scoring 36 goals for Lazio in a tremendous Serie A season.
It was his first title, with the striker becoming the first Serie A player to have the most goals in Europe since Francesco Totti triumphed for Lazio‘s rivals Roma in 2006/07.
Ligue 1 has not produced a winner since Josip Skoblar in 1971, a statistic the likes of Messi and Mbappe are hoping to change soon.
What are the European Golden Shoe rules and weightings?
Only league goals are eligible for the European Golden Shoe, with each strike earning points in a weighted system depending on the quality of league.
The five elite leagues – Premier League, La Liga, Bundesliga, Serie A and Ligue 1 – all carry a weighting of 2, meaning that a player will be awarded two points for every goal they score in these competitions.
For the leagues ranked sixth to 21 in Uefa’s coefficients rankings – which includes the top-flights in Portugal, Netherlands and Russia – goals scored are given a weighting of 1.5, and goals scored in a league outwith the top 21 are given a weighting of 1.
That was not always the case in the European Golden Shoe. From 1968 until 1991, the award simply went to the highest goalscorer on the continent, regardless of the strength of league.
Awards were not initially handed out between 1991 until 1996, when the new system came into force. Since then, only two players playing outside what were the five highest-ranked leagues at the time have ever won the Golden Shoe – Henrik Larsson (2000/01) and Mario Jardel (2001/02).
The Golden Shoe has been tied in the past, most recently when Suarez and Ronaldo shared the honour in 2013/14. Going forward, though, the award will be given to the player who has played the fewest minutes if two of them end up on the same number of points.
This page covers the 2021/22 European Golden Shoe race.
Last season’s standings can be found here and if you want to see the final results for the 2019/20 European Golden Shoe, follow this link.