Rarely has a World Cup Golden Boot race been of such quality.
Typically, the battle to be the tournament’s top scorer is a combination of a couple of elite talents and a few surprise packages that light up at just the right moment. However, in this tournament, the leaderboard has become an exclusive club, reserved only for top hitters with big names.
Argentina’s Lionel Messi and France’s Kylian Mbappe lead the way with six goals each, Norway’s Erling Haaland and England’s Harry Kane are one goal behind, while Brazil’s Vinicius Junior and Mbappe’s teammate Ousmane Dembele still have four goals.
It’s a blistering pace that has taken Messi and Mbappe to unprecedented heights. Both have now surpassed Miroslav Klose’s previous record of 16 goals, with Messi 19 and Mbappe 18. However, they now have another, arguably more impressive record in their sights: French striker Juste Fontaine’s 13 goals in the 1958 tournament, still the most by any player at a single World Cup.
It seemed that this record was destined to remain unattainable. Fontaine belonged to the freer, more productive era of the World Cup, before disciplined defensive blocks, detailed analysis of opponents and improved physical conditioning reduced the space available to modern strikers. The last player to score at least double figures at the World Cup was Germany’s Gerd Müller, who scored 10 in Mexico in 1970.
But expanding the tournament to 48 teams opened the door to the current crop. There is now an extra knockout round, while the wider field has inevitably widened the gap between the strongest and weakest teams. The goals per game is 2.94, the highest since Mexico 1970, and the win average is 2.18, the highest since 1974.
Fontaine fanatics will say he has scored a staggering 13 goals in just six games, while Messi and co could have used two more matches to rebuild him. But Messi, who will play his round of 16 match against Cape Verde on Friday, matched Fontaine’s goal. As the chart below shows, his tournament followed the same scoring pattern from game to game, with Haaland, Kane and Mbappe just slightly off the pace.
As remarkable as Fontaine’s performance is, he does not hold the record for most goals per game in any tournament (of those players who played at least three matches, let’s not forget Ernst Wilimovski). That honor goes to Hungarian striker Sándor Kocsis, who scored 11 goals in five matches in 1954. If they maintain their current level, Mbappe, Haaland and Messi’s teams will be among the top 15 scoring teams in World Cup history, higher than at any time since 1970.
There is some debate about whether Fontaine’s record should even be considered. His last four goals of the tournament came in the third place play-off match against West Germany. The third-place play-off is essentially a meaningless game as two disappointed, losing semi-finalists compete for a bronze medal that will quickly be forgotten. Some argue that records of such matches should be stricken from the record books, including the fastest goal in World Cup history, scored by Turkey’s Hakan Sukur 11 seconds into the game against South Korea in the 2002 third-place play-off.
In any case, it is unlikely that FIFA will discredit the merits of one of its “104 Super Cups”. Instead, those who want to follow the story need to focus on scoring and participating in as many games as possible.
This is where the sheer number of quality strikers gives this tournament a better chance than most others. Four players scored five or more goals after four rounds of games, something that had not happened since 1938, a tournament that cannot be strictly compared due to the use of replays for tied games. This means there are still dominoes to fall before the Golden Boot race strips away the elite scorers.
With the tournament’s best scoring record (two goals per game) and a Round of 16 tie against Argentina, Messi is in pole position and will eclipse Fontaine. Using Athletic predicting the probabilities of the tournament, and keeping in mind that the semi-finalists are guaranteed to play one more match, be it the final or third place play-off, Messi is expected to play another 3.8 games.
Assuming he maintains his current goal-scoring rate across all expected games, he is projected to have a goal-scoring average of 13.7. Meanwhile, Mbappe is projected to finish around 11th, with the other contenders projected lower as they are considered less likely to reach the later stages. However, forecasts and probabilities are ultimately educated guesses; The World Cup has a habit of throwing logic and meaning out the window. After all, Mbappe scored a hat-trick in the 2022 final.
Will any of these superstars be able to break Fontaine’s record? Maybe, Just maybe.