The European Golden Shoe is the most prestigious individual award for strikers.

Winning the respective goal-scoring accolade in your respective league is certainly an impressive feat, but overcoming every forward in Europe is truly something to treasure.

First introduced in 1967 and using a points system based on the difficulty of each league, Lionel Messi is the current incumbent and has won the trophy on five separate occasions.

Nobody has taken the prize more times than the Barcelona superstar, although his eternal rival Cristiano Ronaldo is close behind on four victories.

They're both in good company, too, with legends like Eusebio, Gerd Muller, Ronaldo Nazario and Marco van Basten all lifting the coveted Golden Shoe.

The European Golden Shoe

And many football fans will be aware that Messi is in pole position to retain his crown this season, leading his closest rival Kylian Mbappe by six points.

That's well and good, as well as extensively covered, so we've decided to have some fun with the rankings and make some changes to the criteria.

One of the criticisms in goal-scoring charts are the role of penalties and how certain forwards have an advantage - we'll let you decide how unfair - in the standings.

The standings with no penalties

Don't get us wrong, penalties still need to be scored but there is greater value in strikes from open play, which are almost always more difficult to execute.

Bearing that in mind, we have decided to take away the number of penalty goals away from the top strikers' totals and then do the maths to re-calculate their points tally.

Doing that leaves the standings with rather unaesthetic congregations of players on equal pegging, so we're going to displays the order by how many points the forwards would have.

Check out the result below:

50 points - Lionel Messi and Kylian Mbappe

34 points - Sadio Mane and Krzysztof Piatek

32 points - Sergio Aguero and Duvan Zapata

31.5 points - Luuk de Jong

30 points - Fabio Quagliarella, Luis Suarez, Robert Lewandowski, Zakaria Beglarishvili, Paulinho, Luka Jovic, Raheem Sterling and Arkadiusz Milik

28.5 points - Mbwana Samatta

28 points - Cristiano Ronaldo, Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, Mohamed Salah, Wissam Ben Yedder and Paco Alcacer

27 points - Robert Skov

So, Messi loses his clear lead and has to share top spot with Mbappe.

The Barcelona star has profited from four league penalties this season, as opposed to just one from Mbappe and that leaves them both with a comfortable lead of 16 points.

Ronaldo is perhaps the most notable loser on the list, tumbling down to joint-17th place, having scored five times from the spot at Juventus.

However, arguably the biggest difference is seen by those who have produced incredible goal-scoring tallies this season but almost always from open play.

Mane will be incredibly chuffed with joint-3rd place, while players like Sterling and Alcacer have almost thrust themselves into the mix without clear 12-yard chances.

Fascinating stuff but Ronaldo will probably be thankful that penalties do in fact count.

Who do you think will win this season's Golden Shoe? Have your say in the comments section below.