Gonzalo Higuain brace puts him atop Europe scoring charts

With two goals for Napoli in a dominating 5-1 over Frosinone on Sunday, Gonzalo Higuain didn't just extend his already-impressive lead in the Serie A scoring charts -- he went joint-first in the scoring table for all of Europe, too.

Higuain now has 18 goals on the season, even with Borussia Dortmund forward Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang right now. Both players are at the halfway points of their respective seasons, with Higuain having played 19 matches in Serie A and Aubameyang at 17 in the Bundesliga. He's already scored as many goals in the league this year as he did all of last season, and frankly it looks like Pipita is just getting started.

It's not just Higuain's high-grade finishing, which has been as good as ever of late, that's gotten him into this wonderful form, it's been the development of the rest of his game too. Just look at his second goal against Frosinone for an example:

-Source: r/soccer

That run is fantastic. Actually, no, that run isn't just fantastic. He ruined the lives of those three defenders. He destroyed their confidence in a way that they shall never recover from.

It's something that's Higuain has been steadily improving on this season. His runs off the ball have long been excellent, but on the ball he's pretty inconsistent, not always changing directions well and too often getting the ball stuck under his feet. This season, though, he's been getting more and more effective moving on the ball, helping paper over one of the few true weak spots in his game -- and leading him to this offensive explosion, one that's met his Napoli-best mark and is quickly closing behind his career best, 27 goals scored with Real Madrid in the 2009/10 season.

While Higuain is facing plenty of competition on the continent for goalscoring -- a host of players are sitting on 15 goals behind he and Aubameyang, including Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Robert Lewandowski, and Neymar -- in terms of Serie A, it's Gonzalo Higuain and no one else. Eder is the next closest player to Pipita, way back with eleven goals, and Nikola Kalinic has ten. No one else is even in double digits, though Juventus' Paulo Dybala could soon be flying up past his current nine with the form he's been in.

Who knows where Napoli's lead hitman could end up come the end of the season. He's been on an incredible run, and if he can keep this form up, Higuain could wind up having a season for the ages.