The start of the German Bundesliga is just around the corner, and the debates are becoming more and more tense these days. There are plenty of topics available for discussion, but one of the most popular is who will win the Golden Boot award this season. Two of the best strikers from the previous campaign, Lewandowski and Haaland, departed from the league, leaving the throne empty.
Total Domination
Lewandowski has dominated the Golden Boot race in the last five years, winning each time, and the Pole has had six awards in the past seven seasons. His dominance was like Tom Brady and the Pats overseas. Once mentioning gridiron, here are some NFL point spread offers.
But without him and Haaland, who was the next best thing, which players have the best chances of winning that prestigious award? This is an entirely new situation, making it even more attractive to cover it and debate it. Several of them are in the mix, and we will list them in the upcoming few paragraphs.
Bayern Munich’s Sadio Mane, Bayer Leverkusen’s Patrick Schick and RB Leipzig’s Christopher Nkunku stand above others for the moment. These three guys are top favorites according to the bookmakers.
Mane recently landed in Munich, being the replacement for Lewandowski, who left for Barcelona. The Senegalese star was one of the key players in Liverpool, where he scored 120 goals across all the competitions in 269 games. His flamboyant style of play will perfectly fit Bayern’s system, and it is no wonder why everyone expects to see him becoming the Golden Boot.
Leverkusen’s striker from the Czech Republic, Patrick Schick, was second-placed on the top scoring list last year, with 24 hits in 27 appearances, which is a great ratio. The 26-year-old is expected to keep on at the same pace, particularly because he has enough experience of playing Germany, which makes things much easier.
The French star, and RB Leipzig’s golden goose, Christopher Nkunku, had a marvelous campaign. In 51 games throughout all the competitions, Nkunku had 32 goals and 20 assists, becoming one of the most popular players on the market. Various analysts claim that RB won’t sell this guy for under $100 million.
Nkunku will probably stay in RB throughout the entire season, and given the fact that he is the biggest name in this club, we can expect to see the entire team working for him. That will result in even more goals, so the 24-year-old has pretty bright prospects for becoming the first RB player to win the top goalscoring honors.
Nkunku’s teammate, Andre Silva and Borussia Dortmund’s Karim Adeyemi are the next two guys on the favorites’ list. Silva’s productivity in his first year with the Bulls significantly dropped compared to the season before. The Portuguese had only 11 goals, while in 2021, he scored 28, and was in one hell of a form.
As for Adeyemi, he just arrived from Red Bull Leipzig. The young German will immediately become Borussia’s top option upfront, even though that wasn’t planned to happen. Unfortunately, his teammate, and this year’s arrival at Signal-Iduna Park, Sebastien Haller, was diagnosed with cancer, and he will have to spend some time away from the field. Let’s just hope he beats the vicious disease as soon as possible.
In the meantime, Adeyemi is the best option for Edin Terzic, and we can expect the youngster to always be dangerous.
What is Next?
Some of the pundits believe Bayern’s Serge Gnabry and Leroy Sane have solid chances to end up as top strikers at the end of the year. At the moment, Gnabry is the starting striker for Bayern, even though this isn’t his natural position.
It wouldn’t be odd to see some surprise happening along the way. Bundesliga always had fantastic strikers who would explode out of nowhere, so witnessing another history repeating isn’t shocking.
