Henrikh Mkhitaryan, midfielder of the Armenian national team and Shakhtar Donetsk, is the third among the contenders for the 2012–13 edition of the European Golden Shoe, awarded by European Sports Magazines.
Argentinean striker Lionel Messi, who plays for FC Barcelona, is on top of the list with 19 goals, followed by Lithuanian forward Artūras Rimkevičius, who plays for Šiauliai. Armenian midfielder Henrikh Mkhitaryan comes third with 17 goals scored this season.
The European Golden Shoe, formerly known as the European Golden Boot, is an association football award presented each season to the leading goalscorer in league matches from the top division of every European national league.
Since the 1996–97 season, European Sports Media have awarded the Golden Shoe based on a points system that allows players in tougher leagues to win even if they score fewer goals than a player in a weaker league. The weightings are determined by the league’s ranking on the UEFA coefficients, which in turn depend on the results of each league’s clubs in European competition over the previous five seasons. Goals scored in the top five leagues according to the UEFA coefficients list are multiplied by a factor of two, and goals scored in the leagues ranked six to 21 are multiplied by 1.5
