Kylian Mbappe wins European Golden Shoe award for first time
Real Madrid's Kylian Mbappe has ended his first season in Spain by collecting the European Golden Shoe award.
Mbappe, who also won the Pichichi Trophy for being the top goal scorer in La Liga, scored twice in Real's final league game on Saturday to overtake Sporting Lisbon's Viktor Gyokeres at the top of the weighted table, which counts only league goals.
Mbappe, 26, ended with 31 league goals and became the third Real Madrid player to win the award after Hugo Sanchez and Cristiano Ronaldo.
The last Frenchman to collect the Golden Shoe was Thierry Henry, who won it in 2004 and 2005 with Arsenal.
Mbappe could have been caught on Sunday while he was in Monaco watching the Formula One Grand Prix.
Mohamed Salah, who needed a hat-trick in English champions Liverpool's last league game, scored once to finish third with 29 goals.
Robert Lewandowski of Barcelona, already certain to finish ahead of Real Madrid in the race for the Spanish league title, scored twice on Sunday at Bilbao. He achieved a total of 27 goals for fourth place in Europe and second in the Pichichi.
The Pole won the Golden Shoe twice with Bayern Munich and claimed the Pichichi in 2023.
Last year's Golden Shoe winner, Harry Kane, finished fifth with 26 Bundesliga goals to go with his league champions medal at Bayern. Mateo Retegui with 25 for Atalanta was the top Serie A player in sixth place.
Gyokeres outscored Mbappe with 39 goals, but the table is weighted. Each goal in the 'big five' European competitions – La Liga, Premier League, Bundesliga, Ligue 1 and Serie A – is doubled. For the next 16 ranked leagues, goals are multiplied by 1.5.
Below that, a goal is just a goal.
In the final calculations, the top five in the rankings were as follows: Mbappe (62 points), Gyokeres (58.5), Salah (58), Robert Lewandowski (54) and Harry Kane (52).
Mbappe, the top scorer in the 2022 World Cup, hit 43 goals in all competitions for Real this season.
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