Calendar years are a weird concept in European football. They’re effectively non-existent unless you’re judging the Ballon d’Or, for reasons best known to France Football, and which we just haven’t figured out yet.
We’re coming towards the end of May, at the time of writing. Domestic seasons are all but over and a glimmering summer of international tournament football awaits.
We’re using this little pitstop in the calendar to catch up with Europe’s best performers in 2024 so far. Here’s who’s racked up the most combined goals and assists across the continent since the start of the year.
10. Kylian Mbappe: 15
The French turtleganger squeezes into the top ten purely based on doing it in fewer games than his fellow 15ers.
You could argue that Alexander Isak, Ollie Watkins, and Kai Havertz have all managed the same number of goal involvements whilst playing in a higher calibre of league, but let’s not get into it.
The long-awaited heir to the Messi/Ronaldo throne is widely understood to be on his way to Real Madrid in the summer.
READ: 7 times Kylian Mbappe has explosively fallen out with team-mates, managers & fans…
=5. Lois Openda: 16
Openda joined RB Leipzig last summer, and managed 24 Bundesliga goals in his first season with the club. Silly. The man hit the ground running and then took off again cause he was going so fast.
The Belgian has notched 13 goals and 3 assists since the turn on of the year. He’s gonna have to slow it down a bit if he doesn’t want to end up being snapped up by Bayern Munich.
=5. Jean-Philippe Mateta: 16
The man. The central spike of the most potent trident in the Premier League, if not the world, right now.
Mateta is incapable of not scoring, right now. He’s addicted to it. He’d go into withdrawal and be medically unwell. He’d have to be weened off the goal.
Mateta’s goal involvements are heavily weighted by goals as opposed to assists, but that’s what Michael Olise and Ebere Eze are for. We’d award him an extra five goals per season for tucking his shirt in, but we don’t make the rules.
READ NEXT: The 10 players with the most goals and assists in MLS in 2024: Can anyone catch Lionel Messi?
TRY A QUIZ: Can you name every player to get 10+ Premier League assists in 2023-24?
=5. Deniz Undav: 16
Undav has been on fire for Stuttgart since joining the German side on loan last summer. His goal involvements have hoisted Die Roten so far up the Bundesliga table that they eventually finished in 2nd place on 73 points, ahead of Bayern Munich.
To put that into context, Wolfsburg won the title in 2009 with just 69 points.
You know who could’ve done with a striker in the form of his life, and who ended up losing their manager at the end of the season? Brighton — Undav’s parent club.
=5. Phil Foden: 16
Foden properly came of age, this season. That’s a wild thing to say about a 23-year-old father of two, but it’s kind of true.
Lil Phil is Manchester City’s player of the season, and there is now certified clamour for the Stockport Messi to play centrally for England at the Euros. We’re not getting into that, here.
We’ll leave the task of squeezing Bukayo Saka, Jude Bellingham, and Phil Foden into the same starting XI to Mr. Southgate.
=5. Vinicius Junior: 16
Real Madrid’s Brazilian superstar is a lot of people’s frontrunner for the 2024 Ballon d’Or. That’s all quite premature—we’ve got six months to go—but if he keeps up his form from the year thus far, he has got got be in with a shout.
Vini has scored 11 goals and made five assists in 15 games for Real Madrid, this year, and their season ain’t over yet. A joke of a footballer.
READ: 2024 Ballon d’Or power rankings: Vini Jr & Bellingham lead the way…
=3. Jonathan David: 18
It’s quite shocking that Jonathan David is still at Lille. We mean absolutely no shade to the 2021 Ligue 1 champs, but David consistently churns out impressive numbers, and 14 goals & four assists in seventeen games this calendar year is, once again, class.
Surely the big boys of European football are considering snatching the Canadian bagsman away from Lille this summer.
=3. Harry Kane: 18
Poor Harry Kane. His move to Bayern Munich in search of silverware, only to be the brightest, shining light of the Bavarians’ first trophyless season in 12 years will be remembered in legend. Post-apocalyptic bards singing lute ballads about Sir Harold of Tottenham, the cursed striker.
He’s still absolutely smashing it — make no mistake. How the f*ck you can have your striker score 36 goals in a 34-game season and still only finish third is beyond our comprehension. Obviously Bayer Leverkusen have been literally invincible in 2023-24, but seriously how are you not finishing at least second?
This is not on you, Harry. You deserve a trophy. Big tournament coming up soon — go get ’em.
=1. Cole Palmer: 21
Chelsea signed Cole Palmer pretty late on in the summer transfer window, and the kid has carried them all season. They’ve somehow ended up in the European spots despite being objectively absolutely useless all season, but Palmer can hold his head very high.
The Englishman was struggling for gametime at City, but has been afforded regular football since moving to West London, and he has flourished. 21 goal involvements in 17 games, and he’s not even a striker. Freakish levels of performance.
TRY A QUIZ: Can you name every player to score 10+ Premier League goals in 2023-24?
=1. Alexander Sorloth: 21
If you’d told us back in 2018, when the Norwegian forward was struggling for form at Crystal Palace, that six years later this guy would be top of the goals & assists charts across all European football come mid-May, we’d have had you arrested and, quite possibly, sectioned.
Yet, here we are. It’s 2024 and Alexander Sorloth is mint. Absolutely killing it at Villareal, who are set to narrowly miss out on European competition next season. Tell you what, Norway’s front two with Odegaard behind them — crazy. How have they not made the Euros?!
