A look at the Golden Boot

While we’re all extremely focused on the race for the scud­etto and fourth place, there’s another enter­tain­ing bat­tle tak­ing place in Italy, the race for the Golden Boot. It’s inter­est­ing to break down the top scor­ers in the Serie A, and see the way they influ­ence their team’s table posi­tion. Here are the cur­rent top 10 scor­ers of the Serie A:

Let’s take a look at the 9th placed player, Bar­reto from Bari. The 24 year-old Brazil­ian is full of expe­ri­ence, a short quick striker who has played in pres­ti­gious tour­na­ments like the UEFA Cup is mak­ing his mark on the Serie A. Help­ing keep Bari up and out of the rel­e­ga­tion zone, he’s an expert penalty taker and a cool fin­isher. But what should inter­est you the most is that he’s actu­ally on loan to Bari from Udi­nese who also hold the cur­rent top scorer in the Serie A, Di Natale. It’s inter­est­ing to see how Di Natale has dragged Udi­nese into mid-table medi­oc­rity with an astound­ing total of 26 goals. The Ital­ian striker has really bloomed now that Quagliarella has left, and if Udi­nese were to bring back Bar­reto into the squad for next sea­son, we could see a dev­as­tat­ing strike partnership.

In sec­ond we find Diego Mil­ito with 20 goals, the Argen­tinean is well known for being a ver­sa­tile and extremely pro­lific goal-scorer, wher­ever he goes. His least pro­lific sea­son was his first, when he scored 12 goals in 20 appear­ances for Genoa in the 2003/2004 sea­son, and that’s not bad at all. From then on he’s moved to score plenty of goals, and could break his record this sea­son with another goal in any com­pe­ti­tion, which would put him at 27 in all com­pe­ti­tions and 21 in the Serie A.

At the very bot­tom of the list we find a young Slo­va­kian mid­fielder at 12 goals, more than any­one else at his club, Napoli. Marek Ham­sik, sim­i­lar to Di Natale, is drag­ging Napoli into a Europa League spot, and the second-highest scorer at Napoli is Fabio Quagliarella, cur­rently at 9 goals. It’s astound­ing to see how Ham­sik is sup­port­ing this team by scor­ing 25% of Napoli’s goals and assist­ing 5 more, it cer­tainly looks like he’ll be snapped up by a big­ger club this summer.

It’s truly inter­est­ing to see how the top scor­ers of the league carry and affect their team in so many dif­fer­ent ways, as the race for the golden boot con­tin­ues on.

Tagged as: Bari, Barreto, Di Natale, Diego Milito, Golden Boot, Hamsik, Inter Milan, Napoli, Serie A, Top scorer, Udinese