The race for the Golden Boot is becoming rather interesting.<\/p>\n
Kylian Mbapp\u00e9 helped himself to another two goals as France comfortably beat Sweden.<\/p>\n
Erling Haaland grabbed the winner as Norway edged past Ivory Coast.<\/p>\n
Lionel Messi sits alongside Mbapp\u00e9 on six goals and, with Argentina facing Cape Verde next, you’d never bet against him adding to the tally.<\/p>\n
Three great strikers.<\/p>\n
Three different countries.<\/p>\n
One thing in common.<\/p>\n
Their teammates know exactly where the ball needs to go.<\/p>\n
Which got me thinking.<\/p>\n
Whatever happened to playing to your strengths?<\/p>\n
Football doesn’t always have to be complicated.<\/p>\n
If you’ve got one of the best strikers in the world…<\/p>\n
…give him the ball.<\/p>\n
France do it.<\/p>\n
Argentina do it.<\/p>\n
Norway certainly do it.<\/p>\n
Haaland probably spends half the match wondering whether the ball can get to him quickly enough.<\/p>\n
The answer is usually yes.<\/p>\n
Then I watched England.<\/p>\n
We’ve got Harry Kane.<\/p>\n
England’s all-time leading goalscorer.<\/p>\n
One of the finest finishers of his generation.<\/p>\n
Yet sometimes he looks like a man who’s turned up at the wrong training session while everybody else passes the ball to each other.<\/p>\n
Now don’t misunderstand me.<\/p>\n
Football is a team game.<\/p>\n
Nobody wins tournaments on their own.<\/p>\n
But every great team knows who their match-winner is.<\/p>\n
And they make sure he gets the chance to do what he does best.<\/p>\n
Life isn’t so different.<\/p>\n
We spend an awful lot of time trying to fix our weaknesses.<\/p>\n
We attend courses.<\/p>\n
Read books.<\/p>\n
Watch videos telling us how to become brilliant at things we were never particularly good at in the first place.<\/p>\n
Perhaps we’d all be happier spending a little more time making the most of the talents we already have.<\/p>\n
After all, there’s no point owning a grand piano if you only ever use it as a coffee table.<\/p>\n
Of course, I should be careful.<\/p>\n
I’ve spent years trying to convince myself that I’m getting better at DIY.<\/p>\n
Judging by the collection of spare screws left over after every job, I clearly am not.<\/p>\n
My real talent is making the tea while somebody else works out which end of the screwdriver to hold.<\/p>\n
Perhaps I should have accepted that years ago.<\/p>\n
France know Mbapp\u00e9 is their main man.<\/p>\n
Argentina know Messi is theirs.<\/p>\n
Norway certainly aren’t shy about finding Haaland.<\/p>\n
They’re playing to their strengths.<\/p>\n
Maybe that’s why they’re still in the tournament.<\/p>\n
Perhaps there’s a lesson there for all of us.<\/p>\n
Instead of spending our lives worrying about the things we can’t do, maybe we should spend a little more time making the most of the things we can.<\/p>\n
Mind you, I’d still quite like somebody to pass the ball to Harry Kane a bit more often.<\/p>\n
Anyway, what do I know?<\/p>\n
I’m just a grumpy old man.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
GOM World Cup Diary #21 \u2013 Whatever Happened To Playing To Your Strengths? The race for the Golden Boot is becoming rather interesting. Kylian Mbapp\u00e9 helped himself to another two…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[81,13,53,82,111],"tags":[125,164,79,143,80,166,165,102,106],"class_list":["post-1191","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-football","category-grumpy-old-man","category-humour","category-soccer","category-world-cup-2026","tag-england","tag-erland-haaland","tag-grumpy-old-man","tag-harry-kane","tag-humour","tag-kylian-mbappe","tag-lionel-messi","tag-world-cup-2026","tag-world-cup-diary"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/davethomasonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1191","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/davethomasonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/davethomasonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davethomasonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davethomasonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1191"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/davethomasonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1191\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1192,"href":"https:\/\/davethomasonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1191\/revisions\/1192"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davethomasonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/davethomasonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1191"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davethomasonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1191"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davethomasonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1191"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}