By Kehinde Okeowo
As the curtain draws over the 2020 edition of the EUFA European Football Championship, a number of players who have distinguished themselves since the beginning of the soccer fiesta are gunning for awards of the golden boot, which is the price for the highest goal scorer in the competition and the golden glove, which belongs to the keeper with the safest hands during the competition. Though football is said to be a team sport, it is an age-long football tradition to honour players with special talents and exceptional skills during soccer competitions.
While some soccer pundits have argued that these two awards are inferior to that of the overall best player, the golden boot and glove remain less controversial because they are more measurable and less driven by human emotions. To emerge as the winner of the golden boot, a player is likely to be a striker who is potent in the front of a goal and must have enjoyed the luxury of teammates providing the needed goal assists. On the other hand, a golden glove winner must be a keeper with the required athleticism, special goalkeeping skills and a rock-solid defensive unit in front of him.
Cristiano Ronaldo, a 36-year-old Portuguese professional football player and football maestro, who plies his trade in Italian Serie A club, Juventus and Patrik Schick, a 25 years old Czech professional player who is a striker in the German Bundesliga with Bayer Leverkusen lead the scorer’s chart with 5 goals each, despite the fact that their teams have been knocked out of the competition. Karim Benzema of France and Real Madrid and Emil Forsberg of Sweden and RB Leipzig are in close pursuit with 4 goals but can no longer win the price because their teams have also been eliminated.
Some other players such as Raheem Sterling and Harry Kane of England and Kasper Dolberg of Denmark are all on 3 goals each and in the hunt for the leading scorer position since they are still in the competition. Four Italians, Ciro Immobile, Manuel Locatelli, Matteo Pessina and Lorenzo Insigne and their Spanish counterparts Forran Torres and Alvaro Morata who all scored two goals each can also spring a surprise by overtaking the leading scores to go top of the chart. Outside these unlikely scenarios, Ronaldo and Schick are in pole position to jointly claim this year’s competition golden boot. However, Ronaldo has the edge with a goal assist in the kitty.
The race for the highest number of clean sheets and the safest hands in the completion is equally intensely contested, although, unlike the golden boot contest, the golden glove has a clear leader in Jordan Pickford, the 27year old English goalkeeper, who was born in Washington, United Kingdom and plays for Premier League outfit, Everton Football Club. He led his only rival with 5 clean sheets in 5 games and he is yet to concede a single goal in 465mins of football match he has played so far.
Pickford’s only challenger Gianluigi Dannarumma, an experienced 22 years old Italian, who plays as a goalkeeper for Italy and currently a free agent after a memorable season with Italian Serie A Club, AC Milan last season, kept 3 clean sheets and conceded two goals in 5 appearances and 491 minutes of football in Euro 2020 and can equal his 5 cleans sheets. Unai Simon, 24-year-old Spanish and La Liga club Athletic Bilbao goaltender, who took over the goalkeeping spot from the more experienced but consistent Manchester United goalkeeper, David de Gea, can no longer compete with the English keeper after keeping just 2 clean sheets in 5 appearances and 510 minutes of football. In the absence of a drastic development, the English shot-stopper has a date with destiny as the safest hand in the tournament