The Dutch hotshot who can steal the European Golden Shoe away from Messi
Published:
Unless you play for Barcelona or Real Madrid, then you haven’t had much chance of winning the European Golden Shoe in the past 10 years.
But the Spanish giants’ domination is coming under threat this season.
Only Luis Suarez when he was at Liverpool has threatened to muscle in on Barca and Real since 2009, and even then the Uruguayan had to share the accolade with Cristiano Ronaldo in 2014.
So it should be held in high regard if Sporting Lisbon’s Bas Dost can win it this year.
The Dutch ace has banged in 27 goals from just 25 league games this season, and his hat-trick last weekend saw him move level with Messi.
And Dost didn’t even feature in Sporting’s first four games of the season.
The 27-year-old only joined the Portuguese giants late last summer, but appears to have made himself right at home.
And Dost has really hit form this spring, firing in nine goals in his last four appearances – including that hat-trick and a four-goal haul against Tondela a month ago.
Over the last few months, his record reads 19 goals in 14 games and in total has netted 49% of his side’s goals this term.
The Dutchman is no stranger to these sorts of numbers however, having hit 32 in 34 games for Heerenveen in the 2011-2012 season.
It was that form which saw Wolfsburg snap him up for £6m that summer.
Injuries impacted his first two years in Germany, but the 6ft 5in hitman showed his class with 16 goals from just 21 appearances in the 2014-15 campaign.
That included a stunning four-goal performance in a 5-4 win over Bayer Leverkusen.
And he netted eight goals from 16 appearances last season too, before injuries again hindered his campaign.
But now fully fit and firmly the main man in the Portuguese capital, Dost is revelling.
If he maintains his current form, then he has a very real chance of being the first non-Barcelona/Real Madrid outright winner of the European Golden Shoe since Diego Forlan eight years ago.
All Odds and Markets are correct as of the date of publishing
