Mbappé, Messi, Haaland and Kane have turned the 2026 World Cup into the greatest Golden Boot race the tournament has ever seen

This World Cup belongs to the centre forwards, a throwback to an era when the most feared players on the pitch wore No. 9 or No. 10 and goals flowed freely.

This World Cup has also highlighted how rare truly prolific goalscorers have become. Since the 1970 World Cup in Mexico, when Gerd Müller scored 10 goals for West Germany, only two players have managed to score more than seven goals in a single edition. Ronaldo Nazario, one of the great centre forwards in history, amassed eight goals in 2002 to inspire Brazil to lift the trophy, and Kylian Mbappé matched the tally in 2022, though France fell short in the final against Argentina.

However, at the 2026 edition, the scoring chart has gone out of control. Mbappé and Lionel Messi have already scored 8 goals each. Norway’s Erling Haaland is close behind on 7, while England’s Harry Kane has six. Mbappé’s teammate Ousmane Dembele, with five goals, has some catching up to do, but the way France are playing, it will probably be unwise to write him off.


The numbers underline how extraordinary this tournament has been. The Golden Boot winners in 2006 and 2010 — Germany’s prolific strikers Miroslav Klose and Thomas Muller respectively — both won with 5 goals, while Colombia’s James Rodriguez won the 2014 race with 6, as did Kane in 2018.

This, in fact, is the first World Cup in the tournament’s history where three players have scored seven or more goals, making it a Golden Boot race unlike any before.

In almost a century of World Cup football, only eight players have scored eight or more goals in a single tournament. France’s Just Fontaine’s 13 goals in 1958 has long seemed like an unrepeatable feat. Hungary’s Sandor Kocsis scored 11 in 1954, while Muller struck 10 in 1970. Since then, no player has reached double figures at a World Cup.

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That could change soon. From just three in 22 previous tournaments, the 2026 World Cup may just see three players do it in a single edition.

It’s not just the volume of goals scored by Mbappé, Messi, Haaland and Kane that has made this tournament so special, but also the manner in which they have scored. These four forwards are as distinct from each other as it can get, but there’s one common thread that binds them — their preternatural ability to find the net, in any condition, under any circumstances, irrespective of their opponents’ quality or tactics, often with little respect for the flow of the game.

Mbappé is perhaps the most classical centre forward of the lot, drawing comparisons with OG Ronaldo, considered by many as the exemplar of the position. At full tilt, the French captain is one of football’s most frightening sights. This is how it usually unfolds: a deft first touch, a subtle drop of the shoulder, a sudden shift of weight to create space and then an explosive burst towards goal like a train hurtling through a tunnel before a thunderous shot is unleashed with unerring accuracy.

It may be hard to comprehend, but Mbappé — already a World Cup winner and the scorer of a hat-trick in a losing cause in the final of the other — is arguably having the best World Cup of his life.

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Even harder to fathom is that so is Messi, at 39. Playing in his record sixth World Cup, and having already won the trophy four years ago, the diminutive No.10 has always been compared to the god-like figure of Diego Maradona. And at this tournament, as in 2022, Messi has shown that perhaps he too deserves a church and a religious following.

He is neither a centre forward nor a striker, but for a player like Messi, positional definitions make little sense. He is everywhere all at once, or nowhere at all when he chooses to disappear. Then, in an instant, he is exactly where he needs to be, as he did in the 83rd minute of Argentina’s heartstopping Round of 16 victory over Egypt, sweeping the ball in when all hope seemed to have been lost.

The performance was vintage Messi. The last two players to score a goal, make five or more successful dribbles and create at least five chances from open play in a World Cup match? Messi vs Egypt, 2026, and Maradona vs Belgium, 1986.

Unlike Mbappé and Messi, Haaland gets very few touches through a match and hardly ever gets involved in the play until the ball comes to him in a scoring position. He is the quintessential “poacher”, hanging around near the penalty box for something to happen, for a ball to come his way. And when the moment comes, no one is as lethal as him. Haaland’s 7 goals have come from just 17 shots, compared with Messi’s 8 from 29, and Mbappé’s 8 from 30. While Mbappé and Messi have converted around 28% of their chances — an elite figure by any standard — Haaland’s is a ridiculous 41%.

The last of our Golden Boot quartet, Kane, has long been one of the world’s finest strikers, whether he was toiling thanklessly at Tottenham Hotspur, or raking in the records and trophies for Bayern Munich. His 2025-26 season for the German club borders on absurd — 60 goals in 50 matches (all competitions). But at Bayern, Kane is surrounded by the likes of Michael Olise and Luiz Diaz to ensure a steady stream of chances. For England, he sometimes cuts an isolated figure up front.