NWSL standings: Who is on top of the league by goals scored?

We're past the dog days of summer. It's the final stretch now and the race for the National Women's Soccer League's 2024 Golden Boot is heating up. While clubs compete for playoff positions, a few standout players are rising above their peers, consistently getting the best of goalkeepers at an impressive rate.

With just eight matchdays left, it's realistically a battle between three contenders for the league's top goal-scoring honor. The scoring charts are topped by two new arrivals to the league, Temwa Chawinga and Barbra Banda. They're closely followed by Sophia Smith of Portland Thorns FC, who claimed the Golden Boot award last season.

Kansas City Current's Chawinga leads the NWSL at the moment with an astounding 14 goals in 18 regular season contests. That's 0.82 goals per 90 minutes, a rate that is superior to two of the last three winners of this award. Last week, in KC's third consecutive defeat, the 25-year-old became the first player in league history to find the back of the net in seven successive matches. Just incredible relentlessness. It gave her a two-goal cushion over the Orlando Pride's Banda in the race.

Temwa Chawinga is the front-runner in the NWSL's Golden Boot race with eight matches left

If you make any sort of mistake playing out of the back with Chawinga lurking, you'll be punished. Sean Nahas' North Carolina Courage we're victim to that. Her pace combined with such composure in the final third has proved to be a quite deadly combination that has put NWSL fans on the edge of their seats all season long.

Don't count out Banda or even the USWNT's Smith. It's not a foregone conclusion that we'll see No. 6 in teal run away with the title for the league's most potent finisher in 2024.

The Zambian international is the league leader in goals per 90 minutes (0.99), converting 12 in 14 games since making her debut in purple on April 19. Though, she is in the midst of a two-game scoring drought after an Olympics that saw her put four in the back of the net across three group stage fixtures.

Yesterday's announcement of the 2024 Women's Ballon d'Or shortlist included her name, a testament to her exceptional skill in front of goal.

With the lone goal for the Thorns in last weekend's defeat to Bay FC, Smith shrunk the margin in this tug-of-war battle for goal-scoring supremacy between her and Banda to one goal. Last year, Portland's No. 9 edged North Carolina's Kerolin, the 2023 NWSL MVP, by one to take home the Golden Boot with 11 goals in 17 matches.

Mallory Swanson and Ouleymata Sarr are the two on the outside looking in at this trio with the clock winding down. The two forwards are the only other players within the league with more than six scores.