European Golden Boot
Also see our Euro 2008 Golden Boot betting guide
History of the Golden Boot:
The European Golden Shoe, formerly called the European Golden Boot, is an award given each year to the top goal scorer from all of the European football leagues.
The award was created in 1967-1968 by France Football magazine and was then called the Soulier d’Or, or ‘Golden Shoe’. The award was given to the top scorer from all European leagues regardless of the relative strengths of the individual leagues or divisions. This system proved to be inadequat because lower leagues games often tend to have higher goal averages per game, whereas the skill to score is correspondingly lower. This led to a protest and dispute over an award in the 1990s and for five years the award was suspended but restarted in 1996 with a different system.
New Points System:
Between 1968 and 1991 the European Golden Boot was simply awarded to the highest goal scorer in a European league. Eusébio, Gerd Müller, Dudu Georgescu and Fernando Gomes each won the Golden Boot twice during this time.
In 1991 there was a crisis when the official top scorers for the season were listed as having scored 19 goals but Cyprus FA claimed a player in its league had scored 40 goals and therefore deserved the award. In the ensuing fracas France Football withdrew the award and it was awarded unofficially for the next five years. In fact, Darko Pancev, who won the Golden Boot in 1990-1991 season with the most goals, did not receive his award until the presentation was reinstated in 1996 with a new points system and its new title, ‘The Golden Shoe’.
Goal Weighting:
In 1996 European Sports Magazines, which includes France Football, drew up a points system that took into account the relative strengths of different leagues and weighted the value of goals scored accordingly. The weight of each league is calculated using the UEFA league coefficients and rankings that are based on how the clubs from each league performed in European competitions during previous five seasons. Under the new system goals scored in the top eight European leagues are multiplied by two and goals scored in leagues ranked from 9 to 21 are multiplied by 1.5 to give their point value. Goals scored in lower ranking leagues are taken at face value.
Fifa Golden Shoe Award:
The FIFA World Cup also has a Golden Shoe award for the top scorer of the tournament.
For the World Cup Golden Shoe award assists settle a tiebreaker and the FIFA Technical Study Group decides whether or not an assist should be considered. Assists are passes from a player that resulted in a goal. This is only done if two players have scored an equal number of goals. If required, a further consideration is to favour the player who spent the least total number of minutes actually playing in games.
This award was first introduced during the 1930 World cup and has continued every since. During the 2006 World Cup tournament in Germany two additional awards were added, the Silver and Bronze Shoe Awards for the second and third highest goal scorers respectively.
Bet on the European Golden Boot with the golden boot betting section of Footballbetting.net
