With the World Cup draw having taken place on Friday, we now know who will be facing who and in turn we can have a more educated guess at who could be in the running to win the Golden Boot award. As you can see from the completed draw below, there are no real ‘Groups of Death’ in this year’s tournament, with Portugal vs Spain the stand out group stage match.
Other than that, all of the big teams have drawn fairly straightforward groups and with two teams qualifying from each group, you should expect all of the big hitters to make it through comfortably. When deciding upon your pick in terms of the Golden Boot winner it is vitally important to look at the respective groups and analyse who has the chance to score the most goals in the group phase. Below you can see the list of favourites to pick up the award along with their respective odds from the bet365 website.
As you can see, Lionel Messi has been priced up as the favourite to pick up the award at 9/1, with his former Barcelona team mate, Neymar, just behind him at 10/1. Argentina don’t have a particularly easy group though and in Croatia, Iceland and Nigeria they have three teams who should give them a decent game.
By the same token, Brazil also have pretty solid teams in their group in the shape of Switzerland, Costa Rica and Serbia. Switzerland and Serbia are solid defensively and this would hold me back from betting on Neymar to win the Golden Boot award, despite the fact that I think Brazil will win the competition overall.
After those two, we come to Antoine Griezmann, who is my pick to win the Golden Boot. Griezmann won the award at EURO 2016 and I’m backing him to make it a double at the World Cup. France are one of the favourites for the competition and they should go deep to at least the quarter or semi finals. The main thing that is making Griezmann my pick is the favourable group draw France have been given; Australia, Peru and Denmark shouldn’t cause France any problems and in Australia and Peru they have two teams who Griezmann will fancy his chances of scoring heavily against. You have to consider that a lot of the main strikers will be rested in the final group games for their teams if they have already qualified and with France facing Australia and Peru in their first two matches, Griezmann has the best opportunity to score freely.
Below them, Harry Kane will be licking his lips at the prospect of facing Tunisia and Panama and at 16/1 he is definitely someone to consider in terms of an outside bet. I can’t see England making it past the quarter finals, but Kane could conceivably score 5 or 6 goals in the group. The same can be said for Romelu Lukaku who is also available at 16/1 and any of the England or Belgium attacking players must be considered when you look at how weak Group G is.
Poland striker, Robert Lewandowski, set a new record in qualifying by scoring 16 times and he is available at odds of 25/1 to win the Golden Boot. Despite playing for a fairly weak team, Poland have a decent looking draw and should make the knock out rounds. They could well be a dark horse for the tournament and if they make it far in the competition, Lewandowski will no doubt be the main reason. After looking at the groups, Antoine Griezmann is my pick and at odds of 12/1, now is the time to place your bet!