Leo Messi: Numbers for the Golden Boot

Leo Messi’s great start to 2015 has coincided with the team’s excellent form as well. Barça are well placed in all three competitions, they have the upper hand in the Champìons League, they lead the league in Spain and they are in the final of the Spanish Cup. Messi’s goals have been key in all three. In the 17 games he has played since the start of the year, the Argentine has scored 20 goals in all competitions, 17 of which have come in just 11 games in the league.

Those goals have seen him move to the top of the goalscoring charts in the league with 32 goals following on from his brace against Eibar in Ipurua. It is not the only ranking that Leo Messi leads as he also tops the table for goalscorers in Europe. At the moment, the blaugrana number 10 is the current front runner in the battle for the Golden Boot ahead of Real Madrid’s Cristiano Ronaldo and Alexander Meier of Eintract Frankfurt. In the top 10 we also find Neymar in seventh place level with Arjen Robben, Jackson Martínez and Sergio Agüero.

The race for the Golden Boot relies on a scoring system of coefficents for each league. La Liga, for example, has the highest coefficient, 2.0, along with the Premier League, the Bundesliga, Serie A, and the Portuguese League. The French, Dutch and Austrian leagues for example have a coefficient of 1.5. In the latter former blaugrana Jonathan Soriano is amongst the top scorers. Other goalscorers from leagues with a coeffecient of 1.0 also appear amongst the front runners such as Kabaev from the Estonian League.