A neck-and-neck battle between Kane, Mbappé and Haaland on the road to the Golden Shoe

For more than a decade, the European Golden Shoe felt like a private contest between two giants of modern football. From the 2007–08 season through to 2018–19, Lionel Messi or Cristiano Ronaldo claimed the award in all but one campaign. The lone interruption came in 2008–09, when Diego Forlán topped Europe’s scoring charts, while in 2013–14 Luis Suárez briefly broke the duopoly by sharing the prize with Ronaldo. That era, however, has decisively given way to a new narrative.

Since the 2022–23 season, the race for the European Golden Shoe has evolved into a compelling three-way battle featuring Harry Kane, Kylian Mbappé and Erling Haaland. Over the past three seasons, each of the trio has lifted the award once, signalling a genuine changing of the guard. The current campaign has followed the same pattern: all three are leading scorers in their respective leagues, separated by the finest of margins, and pushing one another at a relentless pace.

Before assessing who currently holds the advantage, it is worth revisiting how the European Golden Shoe is decided. While every domestic league crowns its own top scorer with a “Golden Boot”, the European Golden Shoe compares goals across all leagues using a weighted points system. Goals scored in Europe’s top five leagues—the Premier League, La Liga, Serie A, Bundesliga and Ligue 1—are worth two points each, reflecting the competitive strength of those competitions. Goals in lower-ranked leagues earn fewer points, typically 1.5 or even one per goal, depending on the league’s coefficient.

At this stage of the season, Harry Kane appears marginally in front. The Bayern Munich striker has scored 21 goals in just 19 Bundesliga matches, giving him a commanding lead domestically and 42 points in the Golden Shoe standings. Notably, the next-best scorers in Germany, Deniz Undav of Stuttgart and Kane’s Bayern team-mate Michael Olise, have only ten goals apiece—less than half of Kane’s tally.

Kylian Mbappé is level with Kane on goals, also scoring 21 for Real Madrid in La Liga, albeit from 20 appearances. His nearest challenger in Spain, Vedat Muriqi, trails on 14 goals, underlining Mbappé’s dominance in the Spanish scoring charts. Erling Haaland, meanwhile, is just one goal behind on 20 strikes in 23 Premier League matches. The Manchester City forward remains the league’s leading scorer, though his advantage is slimmer than that enjoyed by Kane or Mbappé.

Beyond the leading trio, Brentford’s Brazilian forward Igor Thiago sits fourth in the overall Golden Shoe race with 16 Premier League goals, while Benfica’s Greek striker Vangelis Pavlidis is fifth, having scored 19 times in Portugal. Despite scoring more goals than Thiago, Pavlidis ranks lower due to Portugal’s lower points weighting of 1.5 per goal.

An even starker example of the system can be found in Latvia’s Virslīga. Riga FC striker Darko Lemajić has an impressive 28 goals this season, yet he sits only sixth in the European standings because each of his goals counts for just one point. With 31 of the league’s 36 matches already played, his scope to close the gap on the top three appears limited.

The current standings illustrate just how finely balanced the contest is:

With many fixtures still to play—particularly in the Premier League and La Liga, which both run to 38 matches—the balance could yet shift. Kane’s remarkable efficiency, Mbappé’s consistency, and Haaland’s explosive scoring runs ensure that the race for Europe’s most coveted individual scoring prize remains thrillingly open.