Golden Boot Odds: Mbappe, Richarlison and Ramos the big movers for top scorer
We’ve got a small break from World Cup football and whilst it feels pretty strange, it’s given us time to reflect on the major betting markets.
This time, we’ll see how things look in the Top Scorer market ahead of the Quarter Finals.
Market Movers In Golden Boot Odds
The market has been blown wide open after some huge results in the knockout stages, more specifically, there’s a new king of the market.
Kylian Mbappe has now been backed into under evens to win the Golden Boot after his heroics against Poland where he scored a brace, bringing his total up to five goals.
Five or six goals has often been enough to win the top scorer award with Ronaldo being the only one to break six in the past 44 years.
France will play England in the quarter-finals and one goal could see him wrap up the award completely as it would put him three ahead of anyone else.
France are actually favoured to beat England when it comes to it, and if France are to go all the way, expect Kylian to get a few more goals.
One young man grabbed all the headlines after he benched Cristiano Ronaldo in the Portuguese squad and ended up scoring a hat-trick.
Goncalo Ramos got a shock call up to start ahead of Ronaldo for Portugal against Switzerland in their first knockout game, and my word did he take his chance. The youngster wasn’t even priced up with most bookmakers before kick-off, he’s now a 25/1 (bet365) shot to win the Golden Boot! To put that into perspective, Cristiano Ronaldo is now as big as 150/1 with Unibet to win the top scorer award.
Portugal have drawn Morocco who have proved to be a tricky outfit at this World Cup, although if you was to ask any Portuguese fan, they’d probably have taken that over any of the other teams.
The big question is: do Portugal carry on without Ronaldo?
Ronaldo is obviously one of the greatest players of all time, but Portugal now find themselves in a similar scenario to Manchester United where they are easily playing better football without Cristiano in the side. Goncalo Ramos looks a great player and if Portugal starts him and they play the way they did against Switzerland, he can easily get a couple more goals.
Speaking of more goals, Richarlison grabbed another for Brazil in a clinical 4-1 win over South Korea.
You could argue Richarlison has scored the two best goals of the World Cup so far and looks like Brazil’s main goalscoring threat.
Neymar, however, is back in the squad so Richarlison’s chances of getting all of Brazil’s goals have gone down since his return, but that hasn’t stopped bookmakers from pricing him up at around the 13/2 mark making him the second favourite behind Mbappe.
Brazil come in as big favourites to beat Croatia and are the shortest price by a decent margin to win the whole tournament; if they are to go all the way, Richarlison will surely get one or two more goals.
Elsewhere we have very minimal movements on some other players. For example, Bukayo Saka grabbing his third goal has seen him go from 66/1 to 40/1, and Harry Kane has also been backed in from 66/1 to 40/1.
England have a few chances of some high finishes in the scoring charts but their campaign could easily come to an end against France.
Speaking of which, Olivier Giroud has also remained around the 20/1 mark following his goal against Poland, but ultimately it’s Mbappe carrying France at the moment and that’s where most people will be putting their money for the top scorer market.
There are no real drifters in the market apart from Cristiano Ronaldo who as we mentioned earlier is north of the 100/1 mark for the Golden Boot. We all know his playing time should be limited following that last performance but that is most likely not going to happen. Cody Gakpo also had a slight drift after firing a blank and is now 50/1 for the award.
The Quarter-finals are rapidly approaching and that should give us a really solid idea of who is getting the Golden Boot after four teams are eliminated, at the moment, it’s Kylian Mbappe who looks the most likely but if France are knocked out by England, his five goal tally is there for the taking.
