One of the players who ought to have received the Golden Boot award was Cody Gakpo, but UEFA made a mistake.
Although Cody Gakpo did not participate in the Euro 2024 final, he accomplished something on Sunday that no other Liverpool player has ever done before. The Reds forward earned the European Championship Golden Boot, matching Milan Baros’ feat after a last-minute alteration in UEFA rules.
Against Poland, Austria, and Romania in the German finals, the Dutchman scored three goals and provided an assist. However, he would not have won the award under the previous rules because he played more minutes and had fewer assists than Dani Olmo of Spain.
However, it was revealed prior to the championship match that UEFA had changed the regulations, guaranteeing that, should the top scorers end tied, the trophy would be shared for the first time since Euro 2000. Gakpo was one of six players with three goals going into the final, along with Harry Kane of England, Dani Olmo of Spain, Jamal Musiala of Germany, Georges Mikautadze of Georgia, and Ivan Schranz of Slovakia.
However, with Kane and Olmo competing in the championship match, UEFA may have been secretly optimistic that one of the two would claim the trophy at Berlin’s Olympiastadion. If such is the case, they were unhappy as Spain won 2-1 and neither player was able to score.
The Olympiastadion’s final whistle brought the tournament’s award winners to the forefront: Lamine Yamal won best young player, while Rodri was chosen player of the tournament.
The Golden Boot winner was declared, and Kane and Olmo’s images were shown on large screens, along with the names of the top scorers, before either award was given out. The names of Gakpo, Musiala, Mikautadze, and Schranz were then read aloud, but in a clumsy move, there was no screen acknowledgment.
Gakpo, the winner of the European Championship Golden Boot, will in fact return to Liverpool for preseason play next month, despite this UEFA mistake. After accomplishing the same feat two decades prior, Baros won the Champions League in 2005 with the Reds. Cody, no pressure.
The award has also been shared by former Liverpool players Karl-Heinz Riedle and Fernando Torres. The German won it in 1992, five years before he moved to Anfield, and the Spaniard did it in 2012, eighteen months after his contentious £50 million transfer to Chelsea.
But Gakpo becomes the second Red in Liverpool colors to win the prize. After a well-earned holiday, Arne Slot, the new head coach, will be hoping that his countryman arrives back at the AXA Training Centre full of confidence and eager to duplicate such results at the club level.
