Mohamed Salah closing in on an incredible European record even Lionel Messi never managed
Liverpool’s Mohamed Salah is close to achieving an incredible feat that even prime Lionel Messi at Barcelona never quite managed.
We’re approaching the business end of the 2024-25 campaign and Salah tops the charts Europe’s five major leagues for both goals and assists.
Thierry Henry, Francesco Totti and Messi are among the legendary players who have topped the charts for goals and assists in Europe’s big leagues, but none of them ever managed both in the same season.
We’ve done some digging to find out more.
Can anyone catch Salah for goals?
Liverpool’s Egyptian King scored his 28th Premier League goal of the 2024-25 campaign in the title-sealing 5-1 victory over Tottenham.
While Salah’s goalscoring rate has dropped a little in recent weeks, he still boasts a healthy lead at the top of the Europe-wide charts with three more than any other player.
Barcelona’s Robert Lewandowski is his closest challenger and eyeing up a third European Golden Shoe. But he recently suffered a hamstring injury and is set to remain sidelined for at least a couple more weeks.
Bayern Munich striker Harry Kane is on 24 goals. He won last season’s European Golden Shoe and will hope he can make a late push to retain the award, but he’s suspended for this weekend’s match against RB Leipzig and only has a further two Bundesliga games to claw back the four-goal deficit.
Italy international Mateo Retegui also has 24 goals, but like Salah his goalscoring rate has dipped a little in recent times with just two goals in his last six Serie A outings for Atalanta.
Alexander Isak and Kylian Mbappe are further back still on 22. But both players are more than capable of applying some late pressure with goal gluts.
Sporting Lisbon’s Viktor Gyokeres has scored 38 goals in the Primeira Liga and is just ahead of Salah in the European Golden Sboe’s convoluted weighting system, but regardless of that Portugal’s top flight isn’t counted as one of Europe’s top five leagues.
Can anyone catch Salah for assists?
Salah’s lead at the top of the assists charts is a bit more comfortable.
He’s notched 18 Premier League assists, which is already more than enough to’ve topped the Europe-wide charts in plenty of seasons gone by.
That’s six more than Barcelona wonderkid Lamine Yamal and Bayern Munich’s latest star signing Michael Olise.
Something pretty spectacular would have to happen for that to be overtaken in the final stretch, even after Yamal offered a reminder of what he can do with two superb assists in Barcelona’s Copa del Rey final victory over Real Madrid.
Salah is eyeing records, too. He’s closing in on the record for most goals and assists in a Premier League season, while he’s only two off equalling the all-time single-season Premier League assists record held by Thierry Henry and Kevin De Bruyne.
“Goal involvements, yes, for sure. Hopefully I’m going to break it soon, I know I broke it for 38 games [season],” Salah told Daniel Sturridge in the wake of Liverpool’s title celebrations.
“So now I think I have one assist to go. It’s something pushing me forward to just keep going and keep working hard, for sure.”
Lionel Messi’s greatest seasons
The eight-time Ballon d’Or winner unsurprisingly dominates the records when it comes to overall goals and assist numbers.
He’s responsible for five of the top 10 campaigns for most combined goals and assists in Europe in the 21st century, and holds the record for the most European Golden Shoe wins in history – topping Europe’s goalscoring charts on no fewer than six occasions.
But in none of those six seasons (2009–10, 2011–12, 2012–13, 2016–17, 2017–18 and 2018–19) did he also top the assists charts.
Messi was top for assists with 19 in 2010-11, 21 in 2019-20 (joint with Thomas Muller) and 16 for PSG in 2022-23 (joint with De Bruyne and Antoine Griezmann), but in those seasons Cristiano Ronaldo, Robert Lewandowski and Erling Haaland topped the goalscoring charts.
READ: The 10 players with the most goals + assists in a major European league season since 2000
The one player who has previously achieved the feat
We’ve dusted off the history books and can only find one player who’s previously managed it since assists started being recorded by stats firms in the early 90s.
No player has done it in the 21st century, and you have to go back to 1993-94 with a young Andrew Cole bursting into life at Newcastle United.
The striker scored 34 Premier League goals for the Magpies that year, which was four more than Romario scored in La Liga for Barcelona. He also tallied 14 assists, one more than a veteran Bernd Schuster notched in the Bundesliga for Bayer Leverkusen.
Despite topping the charts across the major leagues, Cole actually missed out on the European Golden Shoe that year.
It was claimed by Porthmadog’s David Taylor and his 43 goals in the League of Wales. The weighting system has unsurprisingly been sorted out since then.
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