Research
The goalscorers football fans back, and how often they deliver
By Denver (@Denveloper), founder of CalledItMate · Published October 2026
On CalledItMate, a free live football prediction game, players pick who will score the next goal while a match is on. We took 20,156 of those picks, made by 559 players on 4,037 completed matches between 22 March and 30 September 2026, and counted how often each footballer delivered.
Picks on Kylian Mbappé landed 48.4% of the time and Erling Haaland 39.1%. Harry Kane was backed by more players than anyone (173), and 16.7% of his picks landed. The average pick landed 15.0%.
Aggregate data: download the CSV. The chart and data are free to use with attribution to CalledItMate.
Some favourites deliver, some barely do
Among the players fans backed most, picks on Cristiano Ronaldo landed 11.6% of the time (22 of 190) and Vinícius Júnior 9.4% (17 of 180). Further down the list, Cole Palmer picks landed 6 times out of 98, and Ademola Lookman 1 out of 84.
The best return on the full list came from a less obvious name: 46 of 92 picks on Folarin Balogun landed, 50.0%.
These figures describe how fans' picks turned out, not how good each player is. A pick only lands if that player scores the very next goal, so the rate depends on the matches fans chose, the teammates competing for goals, and the minute the pick was made. For how fans predict final scores, see The scorelines football fans over- and under-predict.
Every footballer with 75+ picks
Sorted by the share of picks that landed. Backers is the number of different CalledItMate players who picked him at least once.
| Player | Picks | Landed | Backers |
|---|
| Folarin Balogun | 92 | 46 (50.0%) | 42 |
| Kylian Mbappé | 539 | 261 (48.4%) | 147 |
| Donyell Malen | 78 | 36 (46.2%) | 32 |
| Erling Haaland | 402 | 157 (39.1%) | 123 |
| Alexander Isak | 111 | 39 (35.1%) | 39 |
| Vangelis Pavlidis | 127 | 40 (31.5%) | 33 |
| Raphinha | 210 | 65 (31.0%) | 43 |
| Lionel Messi | 265 | 75 (28.3%) | 108 |
| João Pedro | 141 | 34 (24.1%) | 37 |
| Bryan Mbeumo | 82 | 19 (23.2%) | 29 |
| Mikel Oyarzabal | 175 | 37 (21.1%) | 75 |
| Kai Havertz | 176 | 30 (17.0%) | 63 |
| Harry Kane | 491 | 82 (16.7%) | 173 |
| Raúl Jiménez | 91 | 15 (16.5%) | 36 |
| Lamine Yamal | 179 | 29 (16.2%) | 85 |
| Matheus Cunha | 100 | 15 (15.0%) | 56 |
| Bukayo Saka | 88 | 13 (14.8%) | 49 |
| Ousmane Dembélé | 170 | 24 (14.1%) | 70 |
| Viktor Gyökeres | 139 | 17 (12.2%) | 38 |
| Cristiano Ronaldo | 190 | 22 (11.6%) | 101 |
| Bruno Fernandes | 98 | 11 (11.2%) | 48 |
| Lautaro Martínez | 84 | 8 (9.5%) | 45 |
| Vinícius Júnior | 180 | 17 (9.4%) | 97 |
| Khvicha Kvaratskhelia | 98 | 8 (8.2%) | 33 |
| Cole Palmer | 98 | 6 (6.1%) | 34 |
| Ademola Lookman | 84 | 1 (1.2%) | 35 |
Methodology
- Window: matches that kicked off from 22 March 2026 to 30 September 2026 inclusive (UTC) and finished. Data read on 4 October 2026 and frozen.
- Pick: a player's choice of who scores the next goal in a match, made while the match is live. It lands if that footballer scores the next goal. At most one pick per player per goal.
- Counted: graded picks only. Picks the game voided (mostly goals whose scorer was never confirmed, and own goals) are left out. When VAR overturns a goal, picks on it carry over to the next goal and are counted there.
- Lumpy by nature: one goal settles every pick on it at once. When Mbappé scored the only goal of Paraguay v France on 4 July 2026, 62 picks on him landed together, so a few big matches can move a player's rate a long way.
- Excluded: house accounts run by CalledItMate, internal test matches, and duplicate accounts merged into another account.
- Limitations: CalledItMate players are a self-selected group of football fans, not a random sample of the public, and the matches follow what they chose to predict, including the 2026 World Cup.