There has long been a neat symmetry with Ballon d’Or recognition and Golden Boot winners.

In 1982, Paolo Rossi out-scored his peers in Spain and six months later claimed the highest individual honour in football.

In 1986 and 1990, Gary Lineker and Salvatore ‘Toto’ Schillaci respectively fired an unsurpassed six goals at a World Cup, both subsequently finishing runner-up in the Ballon d’Or rankings.

The correlation continues right into the 2000s and typically, as the above examples illustrate, there is a logical order to this.

First, a player blazes a trail across the biggest of sporting stages, then he is rightfully acknowledged for doing so.

Football’s aristocracy leads the race  

Except on this occasion. Except in the Americas this summer.

Because never before have we witnessed such an enthralling Golden Boot chase play out that involves so many players already steeped in Ballon d’Or lore.

Golden Boot contenders as of 7 June

Lionel Messi – 8 goals, 431 minutes

Kylian Mbappe – 7 goals, 442 minutes

Erling Haaland – 7 goals, 360 minutes

Harry Kane – 6 goals, 446 minutes

As regards to their Ballon d’Or heritage Lionel Messi leads the charge, garnered with a record eight gala triumphs. The legendary Argentine has also finished in the top three on six occasions.

Kylian Mbappe meanwhile has been nominated eight times. This includes a third place finish in 2023.

For his consistent habit of converting an avalanche of goals for club and country, Erling Haaland has been nominated five times, finishing runner-up to Messi in 2023.

That same year he secured the Gerd Muller Trophy after scoring 56 goals in 57 appearances for Manchester City and Norway.

Harry Kane also has a Gerd Muller Trophy in his cabinet, sharing the honour in 2024 with Mbappe after each terrorised the best back-lines in Europe.

The Bayern Munich star has been nominated six times for the main prize, with half of them top ten finishes.

One of the dominant tropes of this summer is that the big-game players have showed up, exhibiting their best football. Nowhere is this better epitomised than in a Golden Boot contest that thankfully – hopefully - still has plenty of drama left in its tank.

Golden Boot winners 2010 - 2022

Four years ago, in Qatar, there was a similar tale of Ballon d’Or nobility vying to win the Golden Boot, only in that instance only two names were in the mix, the contest stretching all the way to the final.

Lionel Messi and Kylian Mbappe each fired five goals apiece on route to a thrilling marquee meeting of their nations, and the former will have been extremely happy with his day’s work in Lusail, bagging two goals as Argentina achieved their first World Cup triumph since 1986.

Remarkably, Mbappe ended up on the losing side despite converting the first World Cup final hat-trick in over half a century.

He did however at least have the consolation of claiming the Golden Boot.

In 2018, Harry Kane accumulated an unassailable lead in the Golden Boot race by the Round of 16, failing to add to his tally thereafter. At that juncture of his career, Kane had just one Ballon d’Or nomination to his name.

Four years earlier, in Brazil, James Rodriguez pipped Thomas Muller to the prized individual merit. Neither player had to that point been recognised in the Ballon d’Or but that changed the following autumn.  

In 2010, a quartet of talents shared the Golden Boot, of which David Villa was the singular Ballon d’Or nominee leading up to the tournament.