ESM Golden Shoe: Ailton aims high

Ailton has played a large part in SV Werder Bremen's rise up the 1. Bundesliga and the Brazilian striker is also challenging in the goalscoring stakes.

Elber close behind
Ailton's double in the 3-1 victory over VfB Stuttgart took him to 12 goals and up to fifth from 18th in the ESM Golden Shoe standings. The win put Bremen in second spot behind FC Bayern München who have the Bundesliga's second top scorer in the shape of Giovane Elber on ten goals.

Vieri hits four
Another big mover was Internazionale FC's Christian Vieri who hit all four goals as Brescia Calcio were beaten 4-0. Like Ailton, Vieri is in fifth place but the early favourite for the Golden Shoe still has to be Celtic FC's Henrik Larsson.

Missed penalty
The Swede scored in a 3-1 win against Motherwell FC to move third and take his tally to 18 goals although the 1.5 multiplier applied to Scotland means he has 27 points, only three more than Ailton. Larsson could have closed the gap on leader Andrei Krõlov even further but missed a penalty before finding the net.

Latest standings (only league goals count):

Last updated: 1 December 2002

Only the leading five countries (Spain, Italy, Germany, France and England) on the UEFA Ranking have 2 as their multiplier. This is to emphasise the difference in (international) performance level between the clubs from those countries and those from the other countries.

A player cannot first play in a summer league (e.g. Norway) and then in a winter league (e.g. Spain) and combine the points total for each season.

Figures from Voetbal International