I felt the same about Neymar before he left PSG and was playing for Barca. But as you said it's almost impossible to judge really? Many pundits say scoring goals is the hardest thing to do in football so you can imagine why they side with forwards so often.

You could also look at it as who's the most influential player you could bring in if you had a blank cheque. I'd class someone like De Bruyne as more essential than Ronaldo there.

As for your question - I think you're on the money with Lewandowski and Salah as their more relied on players because they seem to perform well for them when asked the question. I know Poland had the likes of cannon fodder in their qualifying group but the amount of goals Lewandowski got was staggering. I'm really looking forward to Group H. And yeah Wales/Bale definitely is an example close to home that we see. It used to be Roy Keane with Ireland.