Top scorers outside the big 4 leagues halfway
We have already looked at the top scorer tables in the big four leagues halfway through the seasons and here we will take a closer look at the top scorers in other European leagues, with a primary focus on the leagues in France, Portugal and Holland, which are the three biggest leagues in addition to the "big four" ". Finally, we also take a step outside of Europe to look at the top scorers in the Saudi league.
French Ligue 1
In the French Ligue 1, it is as expected Kylian Mbappé who is the superior leader in the top scorer table. After 17 rounds, exactly halfway into the season, Mbappé has scored 18 goals and he is storming towards his sixth straight top scorer title in Ligue 1. He is currently up to a total of 237 goals scored for the club, a whopping 37 more than runner-up Edison Cavani, and although (as usual) he is rumoured to be on the way to leave for Real Madrid this summer, his scoring record at PSG will be next to impossible to beat by anyone in the foreseeable future.Second is Wissam Ben Yedder in Monaco with 8 goals, and that is 10 goals less than Mbappé. Ben Yedder shared the top scorer title with Mbappé in the 2019/2020 season, but of course it is next to impossible for Ben Yedder to threaten him this season, unless Mbappé were to leave PSG already in January of course. In third place we find Montpellier's Nigerian Akor Adams and Lyon's Alexandre Lacazette with 7 goals each.
Further down we find 17-year-old Eli Junior Kroupi with 4 goals, a French super talent playing in Lorient. Although both Barcelona and Real Madrid have been rumoured to want to sign him, it doesn't feel like an impossibility that he ends up at PSG as a future replacement for Mbappé if he moves, which goes well with PSG's current signing strategy of primarily signing French players.
Who will win the top scorer title in the end is not much to discuss. In principle, it is already decided and the only threat to Mbappé not winning this season again is that he moves already now in January (and even if he does his 18 goals might be enough to win anyway).
Dutch Eredivisie
In the Dutch Eredivisie, we find two players in joint lead, the Mexican in Santiago Giménez and the Greek Vangelis Pavlidis. They have both scored a whopping 18 goals in 16 league matches, a goal average of 1.125.Giménez is the one of the two who has grabbed the biggest headlines, largely due to the fact that he is only 22 years old and is regarded as a future superstar for Mexico. He came to Feyenoord before last season and scored a fine 15 goals in the first season, but this season he has really exploded and has, among other things, scored two hat-tricks.
The 25-year-old Pavlidis has been a solid goal scorer in the Eredivisie for several seasons now, first at Willem II and now at AZ Alkmaar, scoring over 10 goals in four consecutive seasons before this one, with 16 goals in the 2021/2022 season as his best result. This season is something else though, the fact is that he has scored a whopping 51.4% of AZ Alkmaar's league goals.
Overall superior leaders in the league are PSV Eindhoven who are not only unbeaten, but they also actually have 16 straight wins. PSV has scored a total of 56 goals (an average of 3.5 goals per game) but their top scorer has "only" scored 12 goals, which is the veteran Luuk de Jong. With his 12 goals he is third in the top scorer list.
Favourite to win the top scorer title, we probably have to count on Giménez to be. He plays in a stronger team that scores more goals than Pavlidis does, which in the end (probably) will be decisive. Considering how strong PSV is this season, of course Luuk de Jong could catch up with both of them, after all there are 18 games left to play and PSV undeniably are very strong this season.
Can Viktor Gyökeres win the top scorer title in Portugal this season?
Portuguese Primeira Liga
In the lead in the Portuguese league Primeira Liga we find the Frenchman Simon Banza, playing in Braga. Banza has scored 14 goals in the 16 rounds played so far, including a hat-trick as Braga crushed Portimonense with 6-1. He is hardly a player you would have expected at the top, but the fact is that in the two previous seasons he scored 11 and 14 goals respectively, so he is a consistent goal scorer.In second place, with 11 goals scored, we find the Swedish striker Viktor Gyökeres. He joined from Coventry before this season and had scored 21 goals in the EFL Championship, so of course there were some expectations on him, but he has certainly exceeded these, and he is already a new favourite with the Sporting fans. In addition to his 11 goals, he has also assisted to 7 goals, and is thus behind almost half of the team's 37 goals this season.
In third place is the Spaniard Héctor Hernández with 9 goals. Hernández plays in the bottom club Chaves, a team that only managed 18 goals in total, which means he has scored half of his teams' goals so far.
Predicting the final top scorer in Portugal is not easy given that leader Banza does not play for any of the big three clubs (Sporting, Benfica and Porto), which might make it harder for him to keep up this goal scoring. But Braga do have a good team, currently fourth in the league, and is a team to be taken seriously. But considering what Gyökeres has performed in Sporting so far (he has also scored 3 goals in the Europa League), and that Sporting leads the league right now, as well as playing in "one of the big three", it is not at all impossible that we will see the Swede as the top scorer in Portugal this season.
Other leagues in Europe
We also take a quick look at how it looks in the top scorer title race in the other, smaller European leagues.Belgian Jupiler Pro League
In Belgium, it is the 23-year-old Togolese Kévin Denkey who tops with 15 goals scored and has scored 60% of his club Cercle Brugge's goals. Denkey joined the club last season and scored 11 goals but has undeniably developed further this season. Behind Denkey, the Dane Anders Dreyer in Anderlecht and the Algerian Mohamed Amoura, playing in Union St.-Gilloise, has scored 13 goals each.Danish Superliga
In the Danish Superliga, it is even at the top and no player has scored an impressive number of goals. The top scorer list is topped by Bröndby's Dane Nicolai Vallys with 11 goals, followed by another Dane, Alexander Lind in Silkeborg with 10 goals. In third place we find South Korean Cho Gue-sung in Midtjylland with 8 goals, followed by four players with 7 goals each. One of these players with 7 goals scored is the 18-year-old super talent Roony Bardghji, a player that have a lot of the big clubs in Europe eyes on him.Greek Superleague
The top scorer table in the Greek league Superleague is topped by the somewhat unknown Spaniard Loren Morón (Aris) with 10 goals. In second place we find a Greek, the 23-year-old Greek Cristiano (Panathinaikos) and the Argentinian Juan Miritello (Asteras Tripolis), both with 8 goals scored.Swiss Super League
Chris Bedia of the Ivory Coast, playing in Servette, is in the lead in the Swiss Super League with his 10 goals. In second place with 9 goals, we find another African, the Cameroonian Jean-Pierre Nsame (who has won the top scorer title in Switzerland three times before), as well as the German Jonathan Okita who plays in Zurich. After these three, there are five players chasing with 7 goals each.Scottish Scottish Premiership
In the Scottish Premiership, it is surprisingly not a player from Celtic or Rangers who is in the lead, instead it is the 28-year-old Scot Lawrence Shankland who plays for Hearts who tops with his 13 goals, and he has thus scored a whopping 54.2% of all Heart's league goal. After Shankland, there are three players who have scored 10 goals each: the Senegalese Abdallah Sima and the right-back(!) and the Englishman James Tavernier, both in Rangers, as well as Celtic's Danish-English midfielder Matt O'Riley.Turkish Süper Lig
In the Turkish Süper Lig, there is a real veteran at the top with 13 goals, the Bosnian Edin Dzeko, today playing in Fenerbahce. In second place we find the big favourite to win the top scorer title in Turkey this season, Galatasaray's Argentinian Mauro Icardi, who has scored 12 goals. Behind these two follows the Senegalese Mame Baba Thiam (Kayserispor) with 11 goals scored.Ukrainian Premier League-Liha
In war-torn Ukraine, who are under attack by Russia, football may not be the primary thing right now, but the fact is that the league is in full swing. The top scorers in Premjer-Liha are the Ukrainians Oleh Kozhushko in Kryvbas Kryvyi Rih and Vladyslav Vanat in Dynamo Kiev with 7 goals each, and three more Ukrainians follow with 6 goals each.Austrian Fußball-Bundesliga
Finally, we have a look at the Austrian Fußball-Bundesliga and it is really right in the top there. In first place we find four players with 8 goals each: Andreas Gruber (Austria Vienna), Karim Konaté (Salzburg), Maximilian Entrup (TSV Hartberg) and Sinan Karweina (Austria Klagenfurt). Robert Zulj in LASK Linz, who has scored 7 goals, is the closes follower to the top quartet.The top scorers in the Saudi Professional League halfway
We also make a jump outside of Europe now to take a look at the Saudi Professional League, where many old half-retired stars have chosen to earn a little extra money at the end of their careers.And not unexpectedly, the top scorer in Saudi Arabia is topped a little more than halfway into the season by Cristiano Ronaldo with 20 goals scored in 19 games, followed by Serbian Aleksandar Mitrovic who has scored 17 goals. In third place is the Frenchman Georges-Kévin N'Koudou who scored 14 goals.
Other old superstars in Saudi who have not delivered quite as expected, given that they are now playing in a clearly weaker league than they are used to, are Karim Benzema who has scored 9 goals and Sadio Mané and Riyad Mahrez who both scored 8 goals. Sergej Milinkovic-Savic has also scored 8 goals, but given that he is primarily a midfielder, his goal scoring record can be seen as more acceptable.
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