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.