The final European Golden Shoe standings in 2023-24: Harry Kane blows away the competition
The 2023-24 season was the first in 20 years that didn’t feature either Lionel Messi or Cristiano Ronaldo in one of Europe’s major leagues.
Those two names dominated the scoring charts across Europe for almost two entire decades, notching almost a thousand league goals combined and lifting no fewer than 10 European Golden Shoe awards.
Harry Kane has ushered in this new era by claiming his first European Golden Shoe, but who were his closest competitors in 2023-24?
Here’s the full rundown of the top 10 goalscorers across Europe’s big five leagues – Ligue 1, La Liga, Bundesliga, Serie A and the Premier League.
Note: if two players are tied on goals, we’ve ordered them by their goals-per-minute ratio.
10. Alexander Isak – 21 goals
Newcastle ended the 2023-24 campaign with 85 goals scored, which is more than Kevin Keegan’s Entertainers ever managed, and more than a fair few Premier League title-winning sides too.
Isak was key to that and it will be essential they keep him if they’re to fulfil their ambitions of competing with the likes of Arsenal and Manchester City in the coming years.
Surely the best No.9 they’ve had since Alan Shearer, Newcastle might have finished in the top four had Isak been fit and available all season. He averaged a goal every 107 league minutes, which is a ratio only bettered by the elite names at the top echelons of this list.
QUIZ: Can you name the top 50 goalscorers across Europe’s major leagues since 2000?
9. Cole Palmer – 22 goals
There’s no contest over Chelsea’s Player of the Year.
Mauricio Pochettino’s Blues ended the season strongly, qualifying for Europe with a respectable sixth-place finish – and that was largely thanks to Palmer, who has proven their best signing in a long, long time.
The 21-year-old, in his first season of regular starts, has become the first Chelsea player to score 20 league goals since Eden Hazard in 2018-19. He also topped the Premier League charts for total goal contributions, with 11 assists to go with his 22 goals.
8. Alexander Sorloth – 23 goals
Sorloth absolutely rocketed up the goalscoring charts in recent months, with 17 of his 23 La Liga goals this season coming since the turn of the year. No player in Europe’s major leagues has scored more goals in 2024.
The big Norwegian underlined his status as one of Europe’s most in-form marksmen with a remarkable 17-minute four-goal haul against Real Madrid in the penultimate weekend. It’s a shame that Norway aren’t at Euro 2024 because we’d pay good money to see him and Haaland terrorising defences as an old-school strike partnership.
He had a real chance to claim La Liga’s Pichichi award on the final weekend, but unfortunately he suffered an injury 17 minutes into Villarreal’s final match of the season and had to be withdrawn.
7. Lois Openda – 24 goals
RB Leipzig have made shedloads of cash selling off the likes of Josko Gvardiol, Dominik Szoboszlai, Christopher Nkunku and Timo Werner in recent years – and the Bundesliga club continue to churn out lucrative assets.
Belgium international Openda scored 24 goals in 33 appearances in his debut Bundesliga season since signing from Lens last summer.
He cost a considerable €43million, making him Leipzig’s record signing, but you imagine they’ll still be flipping him for a considerable profit in a year or two.
For now, it appears as though his strike partner Benjamin Sesko (14 goals) is the likelier player to be sold this summer, with the likes of Manchester United, Arsenal and Tottenham linked with the Slovenia international.
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6. Lautaro Martinez – 24 goals
Missing a penalty in Inter’s Champions League elimination to Atletico Madrid appears to have knocked Martinez’s confidence. The Argentinian went five successive matches without scoring after that.
But he’d already enjoyed his best-ever goalscoring return of 23 goals in the first two thirds of the Serie A campaign and has played a vital hand in the Nerazzurri reclaiming their Scudetto in rampant style.
And Martinez recently found his goalscoring touch with his 24th goal of the campaign against Frosinone.
“I am on the same level as Kylian Mbappe, Erling Haaland, Harry Kane & Robert Lewandowski,” he said at the end of the campaign.
“I have nothing to envy, the numbers and the trophies say so. There are champions who have won fewer trophies than me.”
Big words. One to watch at the Copa America this summer.
5. Artem Dovbyk – 21 goals
Ukraine international Dovbyk has played a massive role in Girona finishing third in La Liga, punching well above their weight to qualify for the Champions League.
The striker also played a key role in Ukraine making it through their play-offs and will be one worth keeping an eye out for at Euro 2024 this summer.
He sealed La Liga’s Pichichi top scorer on the final weekend by filling his boots with a hat-trick against already-relegated Granada, a game in which Girona capped off their sensational season in style with a 7-0 victory.
4. Erling Haaland – 27 goals
The least surprising entry in the top 10, it’s a testament to Haaland’s ridiculously lethal quality that his 27-goal haul comes in a season in which people have questioned him.
“To win the [Premier League] Golden Boot again is very special for me,” Haaland told Man City’s official website. “I’m so proud to make my contribution to help this incredible team and my amazing team-mates.
“I have to thank all my team-mates for helping me to this award, and the coaches and staff that work so hard. And a thank you to the fans who give me so much support, and I always enjoy celebrating goals with you!”
Haaland has become the first player in Premier League history to win the Golden Boot in his first two seasons in England, while he follows in the footsteps of legendary goalscorers like Thierry Henry, Alan Shearer and Harry Kane in retaining it.
Not bad for a striker that Roy Keane likened to a League Two player.
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3. Kylian Mbappe – 27 goals
Having registered a respectable average of 24 league goals a season for PSG since arriving from Monaco back in 2017, Mbappe has surprisingly only broken the 30-goal mark once (33 back in 2018-19) and is yet to claim a European Golden Shoe.
Now that Messi and Neymar have left, this season has been Mbappe’s first (and last) in which he’s undoubtedly the main man at the Parc des Princes.
It looked as though this might be his best season yet, but having announced his intention to leave at the end of the season, Luis Enrique started looking to the future and regularly benched the star man during the run-in.
2. Serhou Guirassy – 28 goals
It’s amazing that relatively lesser-known name Guirassy still features in the upper echelons of Europe’s top goalscorers, given that he spent a decent chunk of the season unavailable for Stuttgart, due to a mixture of injuries and going away for AFCON.
The 28-year-old Guinea international averaged a goal every other game in the German top flight in 2022-23 and he’s bettered that ratio this season with 28 goals in just 28 games, notching in the vast majority of his starts this season.
Stuttgart ended up finishing second, ahead of Bayern Munich, and there’s no question of who their star man was.
Fabrizio Romano reports that Guirassy still has a €17.5million release clause, and you imagine that clubs across Europe will be all over that. But we hope to see him leading the line for Stuttgart in the Champions League next season.
1. Harry Kane – 36 goals
It was only a couple of years back that Robert Lewandowski broke Gerd Muller’s long-held record of 40 league goals in a Bundesliga season. Harry Kane couldn’t quite beat that, but he came pretty damn close in his debut season with Bayern Munich.
In 2023-24, the England captain scored four hat-tricks and notched a further eight assists hitting an outrageous tally of 26 goals from just 32 games.
You’ve heard all those jokes about Kane being cursed and continuing to go trophyless, but Kane could scarcely have done more in the Bundesliga. It’s not his fault that Bayer Leverkusen emerged from nowhere to boast one of the all-time great seasons.
