Cristiano Ronaldo moved on to 28 goals in Serie A this season with two penalties for Juventus in their draw against Atalanta on Saturday.
The Portuguese superstar, who now has seven goals in his past six matches, has been in red hot form lately.
But did you know that 11 of Ronaldo’s league goals in 2019/20 have come from the penalty spot?
That means nearly 40% of his total goals have come from spot kicks.
That fact has got us thinking about how the race for the European Golden Shoe award would look if penalties weren’t taken into account.
It’s not that we don’t like penalties, but come on, goals from open play are generally more difficult and so there’s a greater value to them.
We’ve taken away the penalty goals from Europe’s top strikers and then recalculated their points tally to produce the updated standings.
58 points - Robert Lewandowski
50 points - Timo Werner
48.5 points - Erling Haaland
42 points - Shon Weissman
38 points - Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, Danny Ings
36 points - Ciro Immobile, Jamie Vardy, Kylian Mbappe, Patson Daka, Jean-Pierre Nsame
34 points - Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi, Raheem Sterling, Jadon Sancho
32 points - Mohamed Salah, Sadio Mane
So, Lewandowski sits at No.1 with an updated points total of 58.
The Bayern Munich forward has scored five penalties this season, taking 10 points off his original total, but still leads the way ahead of Werner.
For Haaland, his goals for Salzburg count for 1.5 points per goal and his goals for Dortmund count for two points per goal.
That puts his total, without the penalty he scored for Salzburg, at 48.5 points.
Moving further down, just look at Ings.
He’s scored 19 goals in the league this season and none have been from the penalty spot, meaning his readjusted points tally puts him ahead of Ronaldo and Messi.
With penalties, Ronaldo has 56 points. Without them, he has 34.
It just goes to show how much the Juventus star has profited from 12 yards out this season.