The Golden Boot is awarded to the players
who scored most goals in the European leagues based on a ranking that takes
into account the number of goals scored and the coefficient of their league. When
the award was first established in the 1960s, the only criterium was the number
of goals scored. The first ever winner of the Golden Boot, back in 1968, was
the Mozambique-born Portuguese player Eusébio, from Benfica, with 43 goals.
In 1975 and 1977, the Golden Boot even made it to Romania, thanks to Dudu
Georgescu, the striker of Dinamo Bucharest. Born on 1st September
1950, Georgescu made his debut with the Bucharest side Progresul, where he
played his first Division A matches, aged 18. He later moved to CSM Resita, and
then to Dinamo. In the 1973-1974 season, his first at Dinamo, Georgescu scored
21 goals in 33 matches. The following year he scored 33 goals, becoming Europe’s
top goalscorer. Two years later, he scored 47 goals, winning as a result his
second Golden Boot trophy.
It took another ten years for the trophy to return to Romania, thanks to
Rodion Camataru, again from Dinamo Bucharest. He scored 44 goals that year,
with the runner-up, the Austrian player Toni Polster, scoring only 39. Camataru’s
title was, however, challenged, being considered an arrangement at the highest
level. Let us just say that he scored 20 goals in the last six championship
legs. Another Dinamo player, Dorin Mateut, won the Golden Boot trophy in 1989,
with 43 goals, and this time there was no controversy surrounding his
achievement. Dinamo was a strong team at the time, with Steaua their only
nemesis. It was in fact that same year that Steaua made it to the final of the
European Cup.
The Golden Boot continued to stir controversy, so L’Équipe stopped awarding
this trophy between 1991 and 1996. Since 1997, it has been awarded based on a ranking
system that allows players from top divisions to win even if they score fewer
goals than a player from a weaker league.