Mbappé takes the crown Messi couldn’t keep
Kylian Mbappé finished as the tournament’s top scorer with 10 goals — and in the process overtook Lionel Messi as the all-time leading World Cup scorer.
France went home without the trophy, but their captain left with history. Kylian Mbappé’s 10 goals won the Golden Boot — and pushed him past Messi at the very top of the World Cup’s all-time scoring chart.
The last two came, fittingly and cruelly, in a losing cause: a brace in France’s wild 6-4 defeat to England in the third-place playoff. They were his ninth and tenth of the tournament, and they carried a bigger number with them.
Mbappé became the first player to win the World Cup Golden Boot twice, and did it while overtaking the very man whose farewell tournament this was. Messi finished second in the race on 8 goals, adding four assists; Erling Haaland, dragged out in the quarterfinals, ended on 7.
For France, a semifinal exit and a bronze-medal shootout of a game will sting. For Mbappé, 27 and already alone at the top of the list, the sense is only of a story still being written.