2026 оны Дэлхийн аваргын “Алтан шаахай”-н төлөөх өрсөлдөөн эгзэгтэй мөчид ирлээ

With only the third-place playoff and the final remaining, there is just one more chance for players to secure individual recognition as the 2026 World Cup’s top goalscorer, joining an illustrious list of names from soccer history.

Only four teams are still involved, and three of them provide the current top four in the Golden Boot standings: Kylian Mbappe of France and Argentina’s Lionel Messi lead the way on eight goals each, with England pair Jude Bellingham and Harry Kane on six apiece. Mikel Oyarzabal of Spain, the other side with a game left, is one back on five.

Mbappe (eight goals in 2022) and Kane (six in 2018) have won the World Cup’s Golden Boot before, but it would be a first for Messi to add to his many accolades at age 39.

Previous winners of this award have earned big moves off the back of the achievement, but others have suffered drops in form afterwards. Let’s take a look at who is likely to receive the trophy this year.

Race for the Golden Boot

Messi and Mbappe have already overtaken Miroslav Klose of Germany on the World Cup’s all-time top goalscorers chart during the 2026 tournament, so are duelling not just for top scorer at this edition — but in almost 100 years of the competition’s history.

Both could have added to their tallies by converting penalties over the past five weeks, but Messi has missed two during this World Cup and Mbappe one.

Should they remain tied when the tournament ends on Sunday, there is a tiebreaker process.

The first step is assists, the second is most minutes played.

Messi registered his fourth assist in setting up two goals in the semi-final win against England, overtaking Mbappe, who is on three. Were they to finish tied on goals and assists, Messi is currently leading the way on minutes played: 712 for the Argentina captain compared to France skipper Mbappe’s 666.

Although Messi has never won the Golden Boot at this tournament, he has received the Golden Ball, the award for a World Cup’s best player overall in both 2014 (four goals, one assist) and 2022 (seven and three).

No player has scored more than eight goals in one edition of the tournament since Gerd Muller of West Germany got 10 in 1970. Frenchman Just Fontaine holds the record for most goals in one World Cup, scoring 13 times in the 1958 edition.

How they have scored

Messi and Mbappe’s goals have been from varying distances, each scoring from outside the penalty box and proving to be a threat from all areas, as seen from the former’s shot map below.

In Argentina’s first two group games, Messi scored two goals that resembled one another — he received a cutback at the edge of the box before sweeping it home. His hat-trick against Algeria in the opening match tied him with Klose on 16 World Cup goals.

Lionel Messi scores Argentina’s first goal against Algeria from the edge of the box (Francois Nel/Getty Images)

Mbappe has combined well with Michael Olise, profiting from three assists provided by the Bayern Munich player. But Spain cut off this combination in the semifinal, and that pair exchanged only one pass.

Meanwhile, Bellingham is a much more specific goal threat as a box-crasher than either Messi or Mbappe. From the below shot map, we can see his shots have all come from a shorter distance, and all his goals have been scored inside the box.

Half of Kane’s total of six have been headers — he leads all players at the tournament with three headed goals. The Bayern striker added two from the penalty spot, and his other goal was the round-of-32 winner against DR Congo, which he fired into the roof of the net from just inside the 18-yard box.

How about the third-place playoff?

Players whose teams were defeated in the semifinals, France’s Mbappe and Ousmane Dembele (five goals) and England duo Bellingham and Kane, still have an opportunity to score more goals in Saturday’s match to decide third- and fourth-place at this World Cup.

Of course, this would depend on whether the managers choose to pick their strongest teams in what for some is a meaningless, even annoying extra fixture, for squads who just want to go home.

In Kane’s case, he did start in 2018, against Belgium, the last time England were involved in the playoff. France were in this game in both 1982 and 1986, and on each occasion they benched captain Michel Platini. But with his second Golden Boot in sight, current skipper Mbappe might not want that to happen.

Prior Golden Boot winners Eusebio (1966), Salvatore Schillaci (1990), Davor Suker (1998) and Thomas Muller (2010) have all topped up their tallies by scoring in this match.

And they are often goal-fests, with two or more scored on every occasion since Poland’s 1-0 win against Brazil in 1974. Fontaine scored four times in France’s 6-3 defeat of West Germany in 1958 to set the still-standing record for most goals by an individual at one World Cup.

How have Golden Boot winners performed the next season?

A pattern that becomes clear looking at the track records of Golden Boot winners at the World Cup is that most score more league goals in the domestic club season leading up to the tournament involved than in the one after it.

Kane (2018), Muller (2010), Klose (2006), Suker (1998), Schillaci (1990), Gary Lineker (1986), Mario Kempes (1978) and Muller (1970) all followed this pattern. This makes sense, as players continue impressive club form into a World Cup, but over the following year, the physical demands of a long summer with their national team catch up with them.

The table below shows the scoring records of 10 of the most recent Golden Boot recipients in the following league campaign, with Mbappe (2022) excluded as the Qatar tournament was played at mid-season in the European winter rather than during the traditional summer window, as is 1994, when the award was shared between Hristo Stoichkov of Bulgaria and Russia’s Oleg Salenko (six each).

Some anomalies to this are James Rodriguez of Colombia (2014) and Brazil’s Ronaldo (2002), who both went on to have career years with Real Madrid on the back of their Golden Boot successes — Rodriguez scoring 13 goals in 29 La Liga games and Ronaldo 23 in 31.

Also, Rodriguez and Lineker earned big moves on the back of their high-scoring World Cups, Rodriguez from Monaco to Madrid and Lineker from Everton in his native England to Barcelona.

“It (the Golden Boot) changed my life. I was doing well in the English league, but then you are suddenly on the world stage. Within two weeks after the World Cup, I’m in Barcelona. That’s what it does, a few tap-ins,” Lineker has said on his podcast The Rest Is Football.

While winning this Golden Boot is unlikely to change the life of Messi, Mbappe or their competitors so dramatically, it will add to their World Cup legacies.