Football Italia was broadcast on UK TV screens back in the day, giving us a feast of continental football like we’d never seen before. The nostalgia around Serie A is heartwarming as we hark back to Batistuta in the purple Fiorentina jersey with the ‘Nintendo’ sponsor donned across it or Edgar Davids’ iconic eyewear during his successful spell at Juventus.
Whatever your memories of that era, Italian football has a special place in the hearts of fans everywhere.
Winning the Scudetto is the ultimate prize in Italy, but personal awards are also important for players. Namely, the Serie A top goalscorer award (officially known as the Paolo Rossi Award from the 2020/21 campaign) acknowledges the most lethal player in front of goal in any given season. talkSPORT BET is here to examine why it means so much and interesting facts about the award.
The History of the Serie A Top Goalscorer Award
Football on a national level was founded in Italy in 1898. Still, only four sides competed in the inaugural event in a knock-out tournament, with three of those sides based in Turin and the other from nearby Genoa. It wasn’t until 1909/10 that a round-robin league system became the norm on Italian shores, seeing Inter become champions for the first time.
As time passed, the league expanded, as did the entire Italian football system. The moniker of the division was rebranded from Campionato Italiano di Football to Prima Categoria, then Prima Divisione and Divisione Nazionale until Serie A was settled on, and it has remained that way since.
Records of the early winners of the Capocannoniere, another name for the top scorer award in Italy, are spurious and unreliable until around the time Serie A, in its current guise, was established in 1929/30 and saw the great Guiseppe Meazza score the most goals that season. The Inter striker went on to claim the award three times in his career.
However, his efforts were eventually surpassed, and not by an Italian player, which was somewhat surprising for the era it was broken. Swedish forward Gunnar Nordahl holds the record for most Serie A top goalscorer awards with five, an amazing achievement, especially considering he won all five awards within a six-season span for AC Milan from 1949 to 1956.
It remains to be seen whether Nordahl’s accomplishment can ever be topped, but Ciro Immobile is best placed to either equal or overtake that record someday; he has been the Capocannoniere four times, representing Torino and Lazio. Who knows? A new kid on the block may become the new striking King of Italia.
Although Juventus are by far the most successful domestic side in the country in terms of team trophies, Milan boasts the most amount of Serie A top goalscorer awards with an impressive total of 18. Unsurprisingly, Italians vastly lead the way in terms of the nationality of the top scorer in Italy, with a homegrown player picking up the award on 73 occasions, with only Argentina and Sweden being the other nations to have players win more than five times.
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Recent Winners of the Serie A Top Goalscorer Award
The race for the Paolo Rossi Award is fiercely contested every season, and we want to highlight some of the recent winners to give you a flavour of what’s been required to take home the trophy and any notable instances that have raised a few eyebrows.
Victor Osimhen, Napoli, 2022/23 – 26 Goals
The long wait for their third Scudetto finally ended for Napoli, and you could see what it meant on the streets of Naples. There was an outpouring of joyous emotion as they romped home to a spectacular title win, but so much of the credit needs to go to their main striker, Victor Osimhen.
The Nigerian bagged 26 league goals during their title run, earning him interest from the world’s biggest clubs. His finishing and physicality were imperious, leaving defenders exasperated as they attempted to stop him to no avail.
Cristiano Ronaldo, Juventus, 2020/21 – 29 Goals
After becoming perhaps the greatest player in Real Madrid history, CR7 surprised many by switching from Spain to Italy when he moved to the Old Lady. Curiously, Juve finished way off eventual champions Inter, but this was no fault of Ronaldo, who did everything in his power to keep his side in the title hunt and eventually sealing Champions League football for the following season.
The Portugal legend has always been near the top of the goalscoring charts, no matter who he’s played for. He won some domestic silverware, but another Champions League title eluded him before he eventually headed back to the red half of Manchester.
Gonzalo Higuaín, Napoli, 2015/16 – 36 Goals
To the heartbreak of the Neapolitans, Higuaín’s side had to settle for a second-placed finish that season but could brag about the goalscoring exploits of their Argentinian talisman. Gonzalo netted the joint-most goals of all time in an Italian season, matching a record set 97 years prior. This was again matched by Ciro Immobile for Lazio in 2019/20.
This earned Higuaín a move to Juventus, much to the scorn of the Napoli faithful. Although he had some success in Turin, he could never again reach the heady heights he once achieved further south.
Zlatan Ibrahimović, Milan, 2011/12 – 28 Goals
Finally, we simply couldn’t leave out one of the best players to grace Serie A over the last two decades. Although Zlatan had spells outside of Italy, this seemed to be his home away from home. The big Swede did all he could to stop Juve from winning another title, but they eventually remained unbeaten all season, so even Milan’s star man had to hold his hands up.
Still, it was quite an achievement for Zlatan to become Serie A top goalscorer at a Milan side where some ill feelings might have lingered from his Inter days.
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