Italian national Mateo Retegui has moved into second place in the competition for the 2024-25 European Golden Shoe, trailing only Liverpool’s Mohamed Salah. This comes after Retegui’s recent goal in Atalanta’s dominant 4-0 victory over Juventus.
The Italian striker, who was born in Argentina, has now scored 22 league goals in the 2024-25 season. This makes him the top scorer in Serie A, ahead of Moise Kean with 15 goals, and Ademola Lookman and Marcus Thuram, who are tied for third place with 13 goals each.
Across Europe’s top five leagues, only Mohamed Salah of Liverpool has scored more domestic goals this season, with 27.
European Golden Shoe Standings: Retegui’s Pursuit of Salah
Since 1997, the European Golden Shoe award uses a weighted system. Goals scored in the top five European leagues are multiplied by a factor of two. Leagues ranked 6th to 22nd have a multiplier of 1.5, and leagues ranked lower than 22 are multiplied by one.
UEFA’s coefficient rankings determine league classifications.
Because both Serie A and the Premier League are among Europe’s top five leagues, both Retegui’s and Salah’s goal totals are multiplied by two. Currently, Salah leads with 54 points, while Retegui has 44 points.
Following closely behind Retegui in the Golden Shoe race are Harry Kane of Bayern Munich and Robert Lewandowski of Barcelona, tied in third place. Both have 21 league goals in Bundesliga and La Liga respectively, resulting in 42 points in the rankings.
Viktor Gyokeres is currently fifth in the standings with 40.5 points, despite also scoring 27 goals, the same number as Salah.
Retegui needs to close a five-goal gap to overtake Salah in the Golden Shoe rankings. There are still 10 Serie A games left for him to achieve this in the 2024-25 season, while Liverpool has nine remaining Premier League matches.
Ciro Immobile was the last Italian player and the last Serie A player to win the Golden Shoe, scoring 36 league goals for Lazio in the 2019-20 season.
Francesco Totti and Luca Toni are the only other Italian or Serie A players to have previously received this award.