Why Giorgos Giakoumakis Is The 2023 MLS Golden Boot Frontrunner

Los Angeles Football Club’s Denis Bouanga leads Major League Soccer with 10 goals. Reigning MLS Golden Boot holder Hany Mukhtar is surging with five since the beginning of May and is one of five players tied with eight. Also in that group are familiar faces Jesus Ferreira and Jordan Morris, and emerging MLS MVP candidate Cristian Espinoza.

But if you do even a little digging into the numbers, it becomes increasingly clear: The race for the 2023 MLS Golden Boot is Giorgos Giakoumakis’ to lose.

Atlanta United’s most expensive offseason signing is the last player involved in that five-way tie for second. But the way he’s gotten there is miles more impressive and sustainable than anyone else.

He began the season having to ease into the team picture after all-too-familiar delays in the process of attaining the correct work visa following his transfer from Glasgow Celtic in the Scottish Premier League.

Then me missed a couple games due to a mild hamstring strain, and since then has been coming off the bench again as Atlanta manager Gonzalo Pineda opts for an abundance of caution with players returning from injury.

It’s the kind of protracted integration that usually prohibits new arrivals from making an immediate impact on the scoring front. Look no further than Bouanga, who struggled in front of goal in his first regular season games last year after signing for LAFC this summer and a similar paperwork delay.

Instead, the brawny yet athletic Giakoumakis has done nothing but score and — even more importantly for projecting the future — get on the end of chances.

According to data from StatsBomb (via FBref.com), Giakoumakis is already fourth this season in total expected goals generated — a measure of how many goals a player would be expected to score based on the position and circumstances of the shots he takes — this season. That’s despite playing fewer than half the minutes of the two legit Golden Boot contenders above him on that list.

In terms of expected goals per 90 minutes, it is Giakoumakis’ world. He’s the only MLS player averaging above 1.0 xG per 90 when the next closest player in that top six of the scoring chart is Morris at 0.5 xG per 90 minutes.

And while he’s unlikely to keep up his rate of 1.36 goals per 90 minutes as he becomes a more regular fixture of Pineda’s starting XI, he has consistently scored close to a goal per 90 since 2020.

He averaged 0.91 league goals per 90 minutes as mostly as a starter at VVV-Venlo in the Dutch Eredivise. He averaged 0.97 per 90 while playing primarily off the bench in one-and-a-half seasons at Celtic.

And he’s the only player in the current boot race who is playing with one of the league’s elite chance creators in their prime in Thiago Almada. Mukhtar and Espinoza face the burden of also being their team’s best chance creators. Seattle’s Nicolas Lodeiro is still good but past the prime of his career (though the Sounders create chances by committee more than any team in the league.) Ferreira often has to do his damage on the counterattack.

There’s definitely a chance Almada — who was included on Argentina’s 2022 World Cup-winning squad — could make a move to Europe this summer. But his importance to Atlanta’s immediate trophy hopes is already fairly clear. And if he does leave, Giakoumakis’ scoring numbers could be balanced out by inheriting Almada’s role as the team penalty taker.

The stats say all of the early emerging contenders for the Golden Boot are likely to regress some.

That doesn’t always happen. The top two finisher’s in last year’s race — Mukhtar and Austin’s Sebastian Driussi — finished with roughly 10 more goals than their combined xG predictions. But on the other hand, in 2021 New York City FC’s Valentin Castellanos won the honor despite slightly underperforming his xG — and despite a challenge from D.C. United’s Ola Kamara that was heavily inflated by Kamara’s role as D.C.’s penalty taker.

So long as he avoids further injury setbacks — a big if considering Atlanta plays on synthetic turf and Giakoumakis is a decidedly physical forward — the Greek target man is the best positioned to absorb a regression and stay near the top of the leaderboard. If he continues to exceed his analytic numbers by scoring near his current pace of 1.36 goals per 90 minutes, he’ll be challenging the all-time great MLS goal scoring seasons more closely than anyone else in this year’s Golden Boot field.

Despite all that, oddsmakers currently have Bouanga installed as the favorite. That’s understandable given his two-goal lead and the fact a large chunk of the betting public doesn’t look all that closely at advanced metrics.

Depending on which sportsbook you frequent, Giakoumakis is either alone as the second-favorite or knotted with Mukhtar. (Full disclosure here: I’m a heavy MLS bettor and I have tickets on Bouanga, Giakoumakis, Morris and Ferreira — but not Mukhtar or Espinoza … yet.)

But if you’re forecasting based on the quality of the performances and the data, there’s a reasonable chance Giakoumakis tops that that list when the season ends. He’d be the third to do in his MLS debut season in the last decade, following Toronto’s Sebastian Giovinco (2015) and Chicago’s Nemanja Nikolic (2017).