European Golden Shoe 2020/21: Messi now on the leaderboard

11:51am on Tuesday 12th January 2021
By Martin Macdonald

Lionel Messi scored two goals against Granada in La Liga to put himself on FootballCritic's Golden Shoe leaderboard for the first time in 2020/21.

The Barca star is now top goalscorer in the Spanish top flight after his double, which takes him to 11 goals for the campaign, ahead of Villarreal's Gerard Moreno on 10.

Even though Messi is now on the leaderboard, he has some distance to make up to reach the top spot as he is currently nine goals behind the runaway leader Robert Lewandowski, who took himself to 20 goals for the season for Bayern at the weekend.

Lewandowski's closest challenger at the moment is Cristiano Ronaldo, who scored Juventus' third and final goal versus Sassuolo. Depending on what historical stats you read, reports suggest that goal made him equal the top goalscorer of all time, Josef Bican, on 759 goals within the professional realms of the sport.

As well as Messi joining the leaderboard, his potential Barcelona team-mate-to-be Memphis Depay scored his 11th goal of the season for Lyon to make our list.

Erling Haaland made a goalscoring return to the starting XI for Dortmund after being missing with injury, and dutifully scored two goals to take his tally to 12 alongside the likes of Kylian Mbappe and Romelu Lukaku.

2020/21 EUROPEAN GOLDEN SHOE STANDINGS

2020/21 European Golden Shoe

Player	Team	Goals	Points
Robert Lewandowski	Bayern	20	40
Cristiano Ronaldo	Juventus	15	30
Paul Onuachu	Genk	19	28.5
Mohamed Salah	Liverpool	13	26
Heung-min Son	Tottenham	12	24
Kylian Mbappe	PSG	12	24
Romelu Lukaku	Inter	12	24
Erling Haaland	Dortmund	12	24
Boulaye Dia	Reims	12	24
Lionel Messi	Barcelona	11	22
Dominic Calvert-Lewin	Everton	11	22
Jamie Vardy	Leicester	11	22
Bruno Fernandes	Man Utd	11	22
Andre Silva	Frankfurt	11	22
Ciro Immobile	Lazio	11	22
Memphis Depay	Lyon	11	22

At this stage of the season, the leagues that run on the calendar year - ie 2020 - inevitably get a head start but these days with the league weightings, very few are still there by the end of the traditional 2020/21 campaign.

A reminder: 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 30 in Uefa's coefficients rankings goals scored are given a weighting of 1.5, and goals scored in a league outwith the top 30, goals are given a weighting of 1.

Ciro Immobile won the 2019/20 European Golden Shoe, scoring 36 goals for Lazio in a tremendous Serie A season.

2020/21 EUROPEAN GOLDEN SHOE (Summer Leagues)

2020 European Golden Shoe

Player	Team	Goals	Points
Kasper Junker	Helsinki	27	40.5
Amahl Pellegrino	Kristiansund	25	37.5
Philip Zinckernagel	Bodo/Glimt	19	28.5
Christoffer Nyman	Norrköping	18	27
Rauno Sappinen	Flora Tallinn	26	26
Veton Berisha	Viking	16	24
Jasur Yakhshiboev	Pakhtakor Tashkent	16	24
Jesper Karlsson	Elfsborg/AZ	16	24
Astrit Selmani	Verbergs	15	22.5
Mushaga Bakenga	Odds BK	15	22.5
Moses Ogbu	Mjallby	14	21
Isaac Kiese Thelin	Malmo	14	21
Anders Christiansen	Malmo	13	19.5
Leke James	Molde	12	19.5
Maksim Skavysh	BATE Borisov	19	19