9 players we can’t believe never won a European Golden Shoe: Shearer, Mbappe…

Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo collected the European Golden Shoe for fun during the prime years of their careers, while last season Harry Kane joined a list that includes iconic names including Ronaldo Nazario, Francesco Totti and Gerd Muller in getting his hands on the prestigious individual accolade.

The award dates back to 1967 and is given to the player who has scored the most goals across Europe’s leagues in any given season. When you consider some of the all-time great players that never managed to claim it, it puts into context how impressive it is to win.

Here are nine incredible footballers we can’t believe have somehow never won the award.

Kevin Keegan

On the one hand, King Kev was never a classic No.9 that bagged hatfuls of goals. He might’ve scored exactly a hundred goals for Liverpool, but he only averaged just 11 league goals a season across his six years at Anfield.

He didn’t actually notch more than 20 in a league season until he was well into his thirties at Southampton. So in that sense it ought not to be a great surprise he was never the top scorer across Europe’s leagues.

On the other hand, he had a one-in-three strike rate for England, scored over 250 goals in his club career, and was widely regarded as the best player in the world in the late 70s – as evidenced by him claiming back-to-back Ballons d’Or.

In that sense, you’d kind of assume that at one point his career Keegan was never Europe’s hottest goalscorer. But his game was about so much more than putting it in the back of the net.

Romario

The Brazilian forward claims to have scored over 1000 goals in his club career.

We’re not gonna get into the weeds with him there, but if that is the case the vast majority are outside of Europe – he scored 98 goals in just 110 Eredivisie appearances with PSV and notched 39 goals in just 57 La Liga matches with Barcelona and Valencia.

That’s a pretty phenomenal strike rate. Surely up there with any of the best goalscorers of his or any era. But it wasn’t enough to claim any European Golden Shoes.

Romario’s career-best European tally was 33 La Liga goals in just 30 matches in 1993-94, but that year the award went to little-known David Taylor, who notched 43 goals for Porthmadog in the League of Wales.

Alan Shearer

The Premier League’s all-time top goalscorer boasts eight seasons with 20+ league goals and three with 30+. And he won the English top flight’s Golden Boot award in three of four seasons from ’93 to ’97.

Like Romario, he can feel pretty aggrieved to have missed out when things went a bit weird in his mid-90s Blackburn pomp.

Shearer scored 31 when Taylor won the award in 1993-94, a career-best 34 in the unforgettable 1995-96 title-winning season but missed out on it as Arsen Avetisyan of the Armenian Premier League scored 39. He notched another 31-goal haul in his last season at Blackburn, but was beaten to the punch when Zviad Endeladze of Margveti scored 40 goals in the Georgian Umaglesi Liga.

In fairness to Shearer, by modern-day standards – in which goals scored in Europe’s major leagues are weighted more heavily – he’d have surely won it.

Zlatan Ibrahimovic

This one might be even wilder than Shearer. Only Messi, Ronaldo and Robert Lewandowski have scored more goals in Europe’s major leagues in the 21st century than Ibrahimovic. The Swede has scored a total of 301 goals in the Premier League, Ligue 1, Serie A and La Liga, plus a further 51 goals in the Swedish first division and Eredivisie.

Ibrahimovic won no fewer than 12 league titles and five Golden Boots (three in France, two in Italy), but can feel aggrieved that his most prolific years coincided with an era in which Messi and Ronaldo rewrote the rule book, winning 10 of 12 between 2007 and 2019.

His career-best 38 Ligue 1 goals in just 31 matches in his final year at PSG, 2015-16, is a tally enough to win it most years. Neither Messi nor Ronaldo actually won it that year, but Luis Suarez was stratospheric at Barcelona with 40 La Liga goals.

READ NEXT: The final European Golden Shoe standings in 2023-24: Harry Kane blows away the competition

TRY A QUIZ: Can you name the top 50 goalscorers across Europe’s major leagues since 2000?

Sergio Aguero

Manchester City’s all-time top goalscorer notched 184 Premier League goals in 275 appearances, averaging 18 a season over the course of his decade of service at The Etihad.

He scored 20 or more goals in six different seasons. But when he notched his best tally of 26 goals, in 2014-15, Ronaldo hit almost double that with 48 in La Liga. Ridiculous.

Surprisingly enough, Aguero only won the Premier League Golden Boot just once.

Edinson Cavani

Another one of the most prolific goalscorers of the 21st century, Cavani notched 267 goals in Europe’s major leagues between his stints with Palermo, Napoli, PSG, Manchester United and Valencia.

You can apply the same argument as above with Aguero and Ibrahimovic. The Uruguayan was a little unlucky to exist in the same era as two players that redefined the game.

He came agonisingly close in 2016-17 with a career-best haul of 35 Ligue 1 goals for PSG, but that year Messi pipped him to the post with 37 goals in La Liga.

Karim Benzema

Benzema must know how Cavani, Aguero and Ibrahimovic feel. But in fairness to the Frenchman, he appeared more than happy to play second fiddle to Ronaldo over the years. In fact, he can probably claim a fair bit of responsibility in at least of the couple of the Golden Shoes that his old team-mate claimed at PSG.

The former France international enjoyed a hell of an Indian summer at the Bernabeu, reaching new heights once Ronaldo had left and Messi departed for PSG.

His vital contributions to Real Madrid’s outstanding La Liga & Champions League double in 2021-22 went recognised by the Ballon d’Or, but his career-best 27 La Liga goals were comfortably beaten by Robert Lewandowski’s 35-goal Bundesliga tally.

Still, Lewandowski never won a Ballon d’Or. And you don’t imagine Benzema would swap if offered the chance.

READ: The players with the most European Golden Shoes in history: Messi or Ronaldo at No.1?

Mohamed Salah

Liverpool’s Egyptian King has won three Premier League Golden Boots. That’s level with Kane and Shearer and only one behind Thierry Henry.

Salah’s tally of 155 Premier League goals in 250 appearances for Liverpool is outstanding. He broke the record for the most goals in a 38-game campaign in his debut season for the Reds, scoring 32 goals in 2017-18, but that year Messi (him again) won his second of three successive Golden Shoes with 34 La Liga goals for Barcelona. The forward hasn’t really got close since, as brilliant as he’s been.

Salah turned 32 in the summer and the latter half of last season suggested he might be slowing down. The ship might have sailed when it comes to competing for the European Golden Shoe.

Kylian Mbappe

Unlike the other players on this list, Mbappe has time on his side. He’s still only 25 and you imagine it’ll only be a matter of time before he gets his hand on the award, given the quality of service he’s set to receive at Real Madrid.

We can imagine we’ll be quietly deleting Mbappe’s name off this list should we update it in the future, but for now we can’t believe he hasn’t won it already.

He’s already PSG’s all-time top goalscorer and has over 350 career goals to his name already for club and country.

Mbappe has consistently scored 25+ Ligue 1 goals during his time at PSG, but we’re a little surprised to see he’s only notched more than 30 once. That was back in 2018-19, when he scored 33 Ligue 1 goals in just 29 matches, but was beaten to the award by…

You guessed it. Him again. Messi scored 36 La Liga goals for Barca that year.