How Messi Has Steered Spain to Dominate European Golden Shoe Award Since 2008-09

The European Golden Shoes as it is commonly referred to as European Golden Boot is an award that is usually given each year to the top scorer in league matches from the top division of every European national league.

Since its inception in the 1967-68 season, the award, originally called Soulier d’Or, which translates from French as Golden Shoe or Boot, has been given to the top goalscorer in all European leagues during a season, with a weighting in favour of the highest ranked leagues.

The weightings are determined by the league’s ranking on the UEFA coefficients, which in turn depend on the results of each league’s clubs in European competition over the previous five seasons.

Goals scored in the top five leagues according to the UEFA coefficients list are multiplied by a factor of 2, goals scored in the leagues ranked six to 21 are multiplied by a factor of 1.5, and goals scored in leagues ranked 22 and below are multiplied by a factor of 1.

Thus, goals scored in higher ranked leagues will count for more than those scored in weaker leagues.

For this reason, Spain has dominated the Golden Boot award since 2007-08 when Cristiano Ronaldo won the award as Manchester United player after garnering a total of 31 goals and 62 points.

Since then, of all the 11 European Golden Boot awards that have been given, only one was won by a Premier League player Luis Suarez. The Uruguayan forward won the award in the 2013-14 season while at Liverpool after bagging 31 goals and 62 points.

All the remaining ten awards have been won by La Liga players and Barcelona have taken a greater share.

Here is a list of all the players who have won the Golden Boot since the 2007-08 season.

From the statistics, we can deduce that Spanish clubs are the all-time football champions in Europe and specifically Barcelona.

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