Luis Suarez receives 2nd European Golden Shoe of his career

Luis Suarez was awarded with the European Golden Shoe after scoring 40 goals for Barcelona last season and It is the second time he’s won the prize, having shared it with Cristiano Ronaldo two years ago.

About Luis Suarez,

Luis Alberto Suárez Díaz is a Uruguayan professional footballer who plays as a striker for Spanish club FC Barcelona and the Uruguay national team.

• In July 2014, he moved from Liverpool to Barcelona for a fee of £64.98 million (82.3 million), making him one of the most expensive players in football history.
• The transfer took place after he had won the European Golden Shoe in the previous season with Liverpool. Suárez is widely regarded as one of the best strikers in the world. In October 2015, he scored his 300th senior career goal for club and country.
• Suárez began his career as a youth player for National in 2003. He signed for Groningen in the Netherlands in 2006 and transferred to Ajax in 2007. In 2010 he helped Ajax win the KNVB Cup while becoming the league’s top scorer with 35 goals in 33 games. He was also named Dutch Footballer of the Year, scoring 49 goals in all competitions.
• In the 2010–11 season, he scored his 100th Ajax goal, joining a group of players which include Johan Cruyff, Marco van Basten and Dennis Bergkamp. In January 2011, Suárez transferred to English Premier League club Liverpool for €26.5 million (£22.8 million). In February 2012, Suárez won the Football League Cup with the club.
• In April 2014, he was named the PFA Players’ Player of the Year and the FWA Footballer of the Year. As the Premier League’s top scorer with 31 goals he won the Premier League Golden Boot, and shared the European Golden Shoe with Cristiano Ronaldo.
• In his first season at Barcelona, Suárez starred alongside Lionel Messi and Neymar, an attacking trio dubbed MSN (Messi, Suárez, Neymar), and helped the club win the continental treble of La Liga, Copa del Rey and the UEFA Champions League.
• In his second season at the club, Suárez won his first Pichichi Trophy as well as his second European Golden Shoe, for which, he became the first player since 2009 to win both awards other than Messi or Ronaldo.
• With 47 goals in 88 games for Uruguay, Suárez is the all-time record goalscorer for his national team. At the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa he played an important role in Uruguay’s fourth-place finish, scoring three goals, and also blocked an extra time goal bound header with his hands during the quarter-final against Ghana.
• At the 2011 Copa América, Suárez scored four goals for Uruguay as they won a record fifteenth Copa América, and he was named Player of the Tournament. At the 2014 FIFA World Cupin Brazil, Suárez scored his 40th international goal.

About European Golden Shoe,

The European Golden Shoe, formerly known as the European Golden Boot, is an association football award presented each season to the leading goalscorer in league matches from the top division of every European national league.

• From its inception in the 1967–68 season, the award, originally called Soulier d’Or, which translates from French as Golden Shoe or Boot, has been given to the top goalscorer in all European leagues that season. Originally presented by L’Équipe magazine, it has been awarded by the European Sports Media since the 1996–97 season.
• Between 1968 and 1991, the award was given to the highest goalscorer in any European league. This was regardless of the toughness of the league in which the top scorer played and the number of games in which the player had taken part.
• During this period Eusébio, Gerd Müller, Dudu Georgescu and Fernando Gomes each won the Golden Boot twice.
• Following a protest from the Cyprus FA, which claimed that a Cypriot player with 40 goals should have received the award L’Équipe issued no awards between 1991 and 1996.
• Since the 1996–97 season,European Sports Media have awarded the Golden Shoe based on a points system that allows players in tougher leagues to win even if they score fewer goals than a player in a weaker league.
• The weightings are determined by the league’s ranking on the UEFA coefficients, which in turn depend on the results of each league’s clubs in European competition over the previous five seasons.

Goals scored in the top five leagues according to the UEFA coefficients list are multiplied by a factor of two, goals scored in the leagues ranked six to 21 are multiplied by a factor of 1.5, and goals scored in leagues ranked 22 and below are multiplied by a factor of 1.Thus, goals scored in higher ranked leagues will count for more than those scored in weaker leagues.