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In the last 10 years, La Liga Golden Boot or Pichichi Trophy has been split between Lionel Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo, Luis Suarez and Diego Forlan. Messi has won the top scorer award five times, Ronaldo three times and the Uruguayan strikers have won it once each.
In the last nine years, only once has a player other than Ronaldo or Messi won the Pichichi Trophy. Now that Ronaldo has left Real Madrid, it opens up an opportunity for another player to win the Pichichi Trophy.
There is more than one contender for the trophy from Real Madrid, Barcelona and Atletico Madrid. But eventually, there can only be one winner and here are the top 5 contenders for the Golden Boot in La Liga.
#5. Diego Costa
Diego Costa returned to Atletico Madrid last January after a three and a half stint with Chelsea. The 29-year-old has a proven track record for his goalscoring exploits.
He scored 56 goals in all competitions in his last two seasons with Atletico before joining Chelsea. In fact, during the 2013/14 season, he scored 36 goals in 52 games across all competitions of which 27 goals were scored in 35 La Liga games.
Costa was the third highest goalscorer in the league in 2013/14. His tally was just one short of Messi’s tally for the season and four short of league’s top scorer Ronaldo.
The Brazil-born Spanish striker has got a full preseason under his belt and looks in fine form. He scored two goals in his team’s 4-2 win over Real Madrid in the UEFA Super Cup.
#4. Gareth Bale
Since the 2010/11 season, Cristiano Ronaldo has been Real Madrid’s top scorer in the league and in all competitions for eight seasons in a row.
Now that Ronaldo has left the club, there has to be a new top scorer. It may be impossible for just one player to make up for the number of goals scored by Ronaldo but someone has to take the responsibility of scoring the bulk of them.
Gareth Bale’s time with Real Madrid has been plagued with injuries but on his day, the world knows that he is capable of winning a game on his own and he showed that recently in the 2018 UEFA Champions League final.
With Ronaldo gone, there could be more freedom for Bale to unleash his attacking prowess. In his best goalscoring season for Real Madrid in the league, Bale scored 19 goals in 23 games. If he can replicate such fine goalscoring form, then he has a very good chance of winning his first Pichichi Trophy.
#3. Luis Suarez
Luis Suarez is the only player in the last nine years to win the Pichichi Trophy by beating both Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi. In fact, Suarez also won the European Golden Shoe twice in the last nine years.
Suarez has a terrific goalscoring record with Barcelona. In 198 games for the club, he has scored 152 goals in all competitions.
In the league, he has 110 goals in 130 games. In his four seasons with Barcelona, he has scored 16, 40, 29 and 25 goals in the league respectively. His rank in the league in those seasons was 9, 1, 2 and 3. The season he finished as the 9th highest goal scorer, he only played 27 games.
With Suarez, you never know. He won the Pichichi trophy before and he can do it again.
#2. Antoine Griezmann
In his last six seasons, Griezmann has hit double figures in the league every single time. Two of those seasons were with Real Sociedad and the remaining four with Atletico Madrid.
Griezmann hit 10, 16, 22, 22, 16 and 19 goals respectively in the league in his last six seasons. Since joining Atletico, his goals in the league ranked him 3rd, 6th, 5th and 6th.
In 143 La Liga games for Atletico, he has scored 79 goals and in 209 games across all competitions, he has scored 112 goals.
Griezmann has been an outstanding performer and matchwinner for Atletico Madrid but their style of play doesn’t end in goals galore. This is arguably one reason why Griezmann has never won the Pichichi Trophy.
However, this summer, Atletico have added some attacking flair to their team with the likes of Thomas Lemar and Gelson Martins. Maybe, this could be the year Griezmann finally wins the award that has eluded him.
#1. Lionel Messi
As long as Lionel Messi is still in the La Liga, he is easily the biggest contender for the Pichichi trophy.
Lionel Messi has scored an incredible 383 La Liga goals in 419 games. In his best goal scoring season, he scored 50 goals in 37 league games.
He won the Pichichi trophy five times in the last nine years and one more will take him to level with Telmo Zarra as the player with most number of awards. Also, in the last nine years, he has only finished outside the top 2 in the race for the Pichichi Trophy only once!
The 31-year-old Argentine won the award in the last two seasons and has a great chance of completing a hat-trick of awards this season especially with Cristiano Ronaldo out of the picture.
