2022 World Cup Top Goalscorer Odds: Can Harry Kane become England's leading scorer this tournament?

Harry Kane will be leading the line for the Three Lions at the World Cup and comes in as the red-hot favourite for the Golden Boot award that he previously claimed at the 2018 World Cup with six goals. 

Harry Kane has consistently been amongst the goals for what seems like forever now. It’s been seven seasons since he last failed to score over 15 goals for his club in the league and since then he’s always been involved in the Golden Boot race in the Premier League. His best scoring season to date in the Premier League was in 17/18 where he managed to score 30 goals in 37 games for Tottenham, the same year that he went on to win the World Cup Golden Boot. This season Harry Kane has 10 goals in 14 games with two assists, a good start to the season which he will be hoping translates into some World Cup form.

When it comes to Harry Kane at international tournaments, this is how he has fared…

• Euro 2020: four goals in seven games
• World Cup 2018: Six goals in six games
• Euro 2016: 0 goals in four games

This tournament for Harry Kane will hopefully be the one that sees him become England’s all-time top scorer, a list where he is currently ranked 2nd. Wayne Rooney has been holding the record for a good few years now after scoring 53 goals in 120 games, Kane is currently on 51 goals in 75 games for his country so the record is there for the taking by the end of the year. The England captain will not need any more motivation to represent his country but the added bonus of becoming England’s all-time top scorer will definitely fire the striker up just that little bit more.

England’s all-time top goalscorers:

• Wayne Rooney: 53 (0.44PG)
• Harry Kane: 51 (0.68PG)
• Sir Bobby Charlton: 49 (0.46PG)
• Gary Lineker: 48 (0.60PG)
• Jimmy Greaves: 44 (0.77PG)

The Spurs player is currently at the head of the top scorer market for the World Cup representing odds of around 7/1, with Kylian Mbappe the 2nd favourite at 9/1. As mentioned earlier it’s a massive boost for anyone that takes penalties in the Golden Boot race as the winning goal tally for the award is always fairly low. To put it into perspective, Harry Kane scored three penalties at the 2018 World Cup, three goals was enough to rank you as the 7th highest-scoring player at the Tournament. Of course penalties isn’t all Harry Kane is good for, expecting him to be scoring the majority of goals for England at the World Cup and expect his form this season not to dip during the major tournament. 

In his 2018 World Cup campaign, 50% of his goals actually came from the penalty spot, a place he is so deadly from. Being on penalty duty and being England’s main source of goals will certainly put him in the midst of the Golden Boot race regardless of England’s form going into the tournament. The next major tournament was Euro 2020 where he finished with four goals making him the joint second highest scorer at the tournament, only one of his goals was from the spot.

Joint leading scorer at Euro 2020 Cristiano Ronaldo scored five goals at the competition to split the Golden Boot with Czech Republic’s Patrik Schick. Three of the Portuguese superstars' goals were actually from the penalty spot meaning 60% of his goals were penalty kicks. This should sort of give you an indication as to how important penalties are in the Golden Boot race and with Harry Kane being the main man for England, you can see why he is the favourite in the top scorer market.