Kylian Mbappe was 18 when he helped Monaco win the Ligue 1 title in 2017. Then came the 2018 World Cup. Eight years on, his form still shapes how fans read World Cup outright odds every time France take to the pitch.
Two finals before he turned 24
At the 2018 World Cup at 19 years old, Mbappe scored twice and won a penalty in France’s 4-3 win over Argentina in the round of 16, one of the great individual displays of that tournament. He went on to become the youngest player to score in a World Cup final since Pele in 1958, helping France win the trophy for the second time in Russia.
Four years later in Qatar, Mbappe scored a hat-trick in the World Cup final itself, only the second player ever to do it after England’s Geoff Hurst in 1966. France still lost to Argentina on penalties, but Mbappe finished the tournament with the Golden Boot as the top scorer, at just 23 years old.
Paris, then the armband, then Madrid
His club form matched the international rise. Mbappe left Paris Saint-Germain in 2024 with 256 goals and six Ligue 1 titles to his name, making him the most prolific scorer in the club’s history and the division’s top scorer for six seasons running.
France gave him the captaincy in 2023, with Didier Deschamps deciding the armband belonged with his most important player rather than his most experienced one. The move to Real Madrid followed a year later, on a free transfer that ended years of speculation about a switch to the Bernabeu.
The adjustment barely showed. Mbappe won the European Golden Shoe for the 2024-25 season, then took the Pichichi Trophy as La Liga’s top scorer in both 2024-25 and 2025-26.
France’s record scorer, at this World Cup
Mbappe has carried that club form straight into the 2026 World Cup. He scored in the opening match against Senegal to become France’s outright record scorer, moving clear of Olivier Giroud with his 58th international goal. That strike also put him on 14 World Cup goals, just two short of Miroslav Klose’s all-time record of 16, and he has kept adding to the tally since, including the opener in a 2-0 quarter-final win over Morocco in Foxborough on Thursday. He now sits on 20 World Cup goals in total, and is one of the favourites in the football betting odds for the Golden Boot this year.
Deschamps has built this France side around four attackers rather than a lone striker, with Ousmane Dembele and Bayern Munich’s Michael Olise both playing some of the best football of their careers alongside him this summer. Mbappe himself has spent as much time chasing back to win the ball as finishing chances, a real shift from the teenager who arrived at his first World Cup as a pure counter-attacking threat, with little expected of him off the ball.
The road to another final
The 19-year-old who stunned Argentina, then lifted the World Cup in Russia in 2018, is now the senior figure holding France’s front line together and, since June, the country’s own record goalscorer.
It’s clear that Mbappe has helped unite the squad this summer, and it shows in how the team plays, secure without the ball and still adventurous with it. France have every chance of going the distance this year, and Mbappe has been central to their efforts so far.
