The World Cup is a festival of football, and for those who check the betting markets at in2bet, a festival of betting options. There isn’t going to be any shortage of things to predict at this winter World Cup, from the eventual winner to the Player of the Tournament. You can also bet on group winners, individual matches and more besides – but one of the most intriguing hypotheticals before any tournament is for the Golden Boot: who will score the most goals across a month of football?
Below, we’ll look at some of the players expected to be among the goals in Qatar, and consider why you might want to back some of them, and why you should back away from others.
Harry Kane
We know Kane can win the Golden Boot, because he’s won it before. He’s the reigning holder of it, and history shows that the tournament top scorer usually gets most of his work done in the group stages. England face Wales, the USA and Iran in their first three games, and none of those sides are what you would consider defensive powerhouses. With England fancied to be among the teams that go furthest in the competition, Kane should have a chance to pad his total, and although he’s the bookies’ favourite, you should still find some value for him to repeat his actions of 2018.
Cristiano Ronaldo
The Manchester United forward will quite possibly become the top scorer in World Cup finals matches, but he’s likely a wasted bet to be the top scorer in this finals competition. For a start, Portugal have a testing group, with Uruguay, Ghana and South Korea to navigate just to make the second round. There, they could face Brazil, or potentially Serbia, the team that finished ahead of them in qualifying. We wouldn’t fancy Portugal to be prolific in this World Cup, and therefore we don’t expect Ronaldo to outperform the collected striking talent on show.
Kylian Mbappe
Mbappe was oddly muted in the Euros last summer, but you can’t keep a striker of this quality down for long. He’s fired seven in seven for PSG despite having to share the striking duties with Neymar and Leo Messi, and being paired with Karim Benzema means he’s got a unselfish attacking partner here. France haven’t got the most testing of groups: Denmark will be a challenge, but Australia and Tunisia represent opportunities to get the ball rolling for Mbappe, and once he starts scoring he can be hard to stop, as 2018 proved.
Neymar
Brazil have surely got to stop underperforming at World Cups; they’ve been pretty ordinary at every finals since they won in 2002, and in 2014 Neymar seemed to visibly wilt under the strain of carrying a side trying to win in front of their home crowd. The bookies have his team as favourites to lift the trophy aloft this winter, and this is certainly a much-improved Brazil. If they’re going to live up to the hype, it will be in part because Neymar has shaken off the ghosts of previous tournaments.
