Golden Boot Winners in Football, Explained

Lionel Messi has won the European Golden Shoe a record six times, ahead of Cristiano Ronaldo on four. But “Golden Boot” is one of the most confused terms in football, because it refers to three different awards. Sorting out which one someone means is the first step to answering who has won the most.

The three are the European Golden Shoe, the Premier League Golden Boot, and the World Cup Golden Boot. Each honors the top scorer of a different competition and is run by a different body. Here is what each award is, who leads it, and the recent winners. Figures are as of the 2023-24 season.

The three Golden Boot awards

Award	What it honors	Record holder
European Golden Shoe	Top league scorer across all of Europe	Lionel Messi (6)
Premier League Golden Boot	Top scorer in an English Premier League season	Thierry Henry (4)
World Cup Golden Boot	Top scorer at a single World Cup tournament	One-off, no repeat multiple winner

The European Golden Shoe is the one most people mean by “the Golden Boot” in a continent-wide sense, so it leads this guide. The Premier League and World Cup versions are covered below.

The European Golden Shoe: Messi’s record six

The European Golden Shoe goes each year to the leading league goalscorer in Europe. Because leagues differ in strength, goals are weighted by a league coefficient, so a goal in a top division like England, Spain or Italy counts for more than one in a weaker league. That weighting stops the award from simply going to whoever pads their total against the weakest defenses.

Lionel Messi has won it six times, in 2010, 2012, 2013, 2017, 2018 and 2019, all with Barcelona, the most of any player. Cristiano Ronaldo is second with four, spread across his Manchester United and Real Madrid years, including a staggering 48 league goals in 2014-15. Between them the two rivals dominated the award for well over a decade, just as they did the Ballon d’Or.

Recent European Golden Shoe winners

The table lists the winners of the most recent completed seasons, with their club and league goal tally.

Season	Winner	Club	League goals
2023-24	Harry Kane	Bayern Munich	36
2022-23	Erling Haaland	Manchester City	36
2021-22	Robert Lewandowski	Bayern Munich	35
2020-21	Robert Lewandowski	Bayern Munich	41
2019-20	Ciro Immobile	Lazio	36
2018-19	Lionel Messi	Barcelona	36
2017-18	Lionel Messi	Barcelona	34
2016-17	Lionel Messi	Barcelona	37
2015-16	Luis Suarez	Barcelona	40
2014-15	Cristiano Ronaldo	Real Madrid	48

The most recent winner is decided at the end of each European season, once every top-flight league has finished. The list shows how the award has spread beyond Messi and Ronaldo to Lewandowski, Haaland and Kane in recent years.

The Premier League Golden Boot

The Premier League Golden Boot is an English award, given to the top scorer in a single Premier League season. Thierry Henry holds the record with four, won during his peak years at Arsenal. Harry Kane, Mohamed Salah and Alan Shearer have each won it multiple times, making them the closest challengers to Henry’s mark.

Because it covers only one league, the Premier League Golden Boot is a different measure from the European Golden Shoe, which compares scorers across the whole continent. A player can win the English award without troubling the European one if bigger totals are posted elsewhere in Europe that season.

The World Cup Golden Boot

The World Cup Golden Boot is the odd one out: a one-off award for the top scorer at a single World Cup, decided over about a month rather than a season. Because tournaments come every four years and squads rotate, no player has dominated it the way Messi has the European Golden Shoe. Recent winners include James Rodriguez in 2014, Harry Kane in 2018 and Kylian Mbappe in 2022, each finishing as the tournament’s leading marksman.

That short window makes it the most unpredictable of the three. A striker can win the World Cup Golden Boot on a hot run of a few games without being the best scorer in the world across a full year.

Which Golden Boot is the “real” one

There is no single answer, which is exactly why the term causes confusion. For a season-long, continent-wide measure of the best scorer, the European Golden Shoe is the one to cite, and Messi’s six leads it. For English football, it is the Premier League Golden Boot and Henry’s four. For a World Cup, it is the tournament award.

To see how these scorers rank over full careers rather than single seasons, visit our leaderboards for most goals in football history and most Champions League goals. Six European Golden Shoes is the mark to beat, and like so many scoring records, it belongs to Lionel Messi.