Luis Suarez beats Cristiano Ronaldo to the European Golden Shoe
Sunday 15 May 2016 22:58, UK
Luis Suarez has won the European Golden Shoe - dethroning last season's top scorer Cristiano Ronaldo.
The Barcelona striker has scored a remarkable 40 league goals for the La Liga champions - five more than Real Madrid's Ronaldo.
Suarez's tally is the best in Europe, meaning, for the second time in his career, he will be presented with the Golden Shoe. The Uruguyan shared the prize with Ronaldo in 2013/14 after bagging 31 goals with Liverpool.
Second place on the list is taken by Napoli forward Gonzalo Higuain, who scored a hat-trick on the final day of the Serie A season to take his tally to 36.
Meanwhile, the Premier League's top marksman, Harry Kane, finished ninth, with 25 strikes.
The Golden Shoe award caps a stunning season for Suarez, who has scored 59 goals in 52 appearances and also finished joint-top of the La Liga assists charts with team-mate Lionel Messi after teeing up 16 goals for his Barca colleagues.
As well as the individual accolades, Suarez has also won La Liga, the UEFA Super Cup and FIFA Club World Cup with Barcelona this season - and could yet add the Copa del Rey to that list, too.
The Golden Shoe award is not as straightforward as it would seem. There are two factors in play when deciding the Golden Shoe - goals and the UEFA coefficient ranking. The goals speak for themselves - you have to score quite a few and penalties count - but the league rankings are slightly trickier.
Essentially, each player's goal tally is multiplied by the ranking of the league they score in. The toughest leagues are given the highest rating of 2.0, the next are assigned a 1.5 rating and the final leagues are given 1.0.
As a result, while Zlatan Ibrahimovic scored 38 league goals for Paris St Germain, that was only good enough for sixth place on the list because Ligue 1 was not deemed one of the five strongest leagues in Europe for the 2015/16 season.
