2010 FIFA Golden Boot

Even we were caught off guard by FIFA’s recent ruling that should their be two or more players on the same amount of goals come the end of the finals that the player then with the most assists would walk away with arguably the most sought after personal accolade a World Cup has to offer, certainly for a forward. The strange thing about this year, even though there were two forwards in the shake-up, was that a midfielder would win the award. Thomas Mueller of Germany ousted the likes of David Villa, Diego Forlan and Wesley Senijder, whom all scored five goals in South Africa, to get his hands on the Golden Boot after adding three assists to the three goals he collectively amassed through his stay with Germany.

Thomas Mueller is a midfielder/winger by trade and by winning the 2010 Golden Boot in South Africa became the first player since Grzegorz Lato, Poland, to win the prestigious award without playing in a forward role. Closely followed in second place was Spain’s David Villa, who missed several glorious opportunities to grasp the award in the final but will now have to settle for silver instead of Gold. In third place was another midfielder, Wesley Sneijder. The Dutch schemer did get fortunate with two of his goals in that one definitely wasn’t his and the other took a wicked deflection, but he should be proud of his achievements nonetheless considering he plays in a deeper position than that of Villa or Mueller. There was another player which scored five goal in that of Uruguay’s Diego Forlan but he unfortunately didn’t collect any scoring honour and had to settle for fourth place. All three (Villa, Sneijder & Forlan) had 1 assist but the decision then went on goals per minute, and with Forlan playing almost every minute of every one of Uruguay’s games, he missed out.

It would have taken a shrewd punter to have predicted beforehand that Germany’s Thomas Mueller would pick up the 2010 FIFA Golden Boot. We’ve seen him on plenty of occasions for Bayern Munich and can honestly say we thought nothing of him, in fact we even thought he was a load of rubbish, but he surprised us all with his scoring antics in these finals and at just 20 years-old will now be highly sought after in the summer transfer market.

Final Scoring Standings:

Thomas Mueller – 5 Goals (3 assists)
David Villa – 5 Goals (1 assist)
Wesley Sneijder – 5 Goals (1 assist)
Diego Forlan – 5 Goals (1 assist)
Gonzalo Higuain – 4 Goals
Robert Vittek – 4 Goals
Miroslav Klose – 4 Goals