Diego Forlan has won the coveted Golden Boot award as he was considered by experts as being the best player of the World Cup 2010. In almost every game he played in, the soccer scoreboards showed his name, as he scored in almost every game he played in. In addition, he was one of the few players who managed to consistently control the infamously bad “Jubiliani” ball.

Forlan polled 23.4% of the votes awarded, with the Dutch master player Wesley Sneijder receiving 21.8% of the votes, and the Spanish David Villa taking 16.9%.

Forlan comes from a footballing family. His father played for Uruguay in the World Cups of 1966 and 1974. Further down the line, his grandfather played for Independiente, a top Argentinean team. Forlan started his career at this same team, after moving through the ranks from the youth team to the senior team.
After a fantastic few years with the Argentinean club, in which he made eighty appearances and scored 37 goals in the process, he got his big European break when he was transferred to Manchester United for nearly 11 million dollars.

Unfortunately he was not able to transfer his sensational scoring record to the English league and in fact he had a very bad experience there, and became known by the Manchester fans as ‘Diego Forlorn’.

His first game for the club was in January 2002, but he didn’t manage to score his first goal until September, and overall he only managed to score ten goals in 62 appearances for Manchester United.

Two years later he was shipped away from Manchester to Villarreal in Spain, and at this point his career suddenly took off again. In his very first season there he scored 25 goals, which made him the top scorer in the Spanish league for that season. That year he even won the European Golden Boot, and helped Villarreal to qualify for the Champions League for the first time in their history.

He spent 3 seasons with the club and scored a total of 54 goals in 106 games, and from then on his career continued to go uphill. He moved to Athletico Madrid to replace the departed Fernando Torres, and continued his fantastic record there, scoring 32 goals in 33 appearances for the club, and winning the European Golden Boot for the second time. Last season he helped Athletico Madrid win the Europa cup (the scoreboard showed 2-1 to Madrid), beating the English team Fulham in the final and by doing so showing the English what a great player he really is.

Now he has been recognized as a great striker on the International stage, with the World Cup giving him a chance to showcase his skills on the biggest of stages.

He scored 5 goals in 7 games on his way to winning the Golden Ball, and helped his Uruguayan team progress much further than anyone could have expected with an appearance in the semi-finals. A fantastic player with an interesting up and down career, and a definite worthy winner of the Golden boot!

For more information on Forlan. Please go to: wikipedia