Lionel Messi vs Cristiano Ronaldo is the eternal debate.
Who is the GOAT?
To be honest, it’s rather tedious.
The two superstars are probably the two greatest players to have ever played the game. But rather than appreciate their qualities, football fans are constantly trying to compare them and argue who is best.
How do you decide which player is better? The number of trophies they’ve won? The number of goals scored? The number of Ballon d’Ors they’ve earned?
Or by how popular they are?
Well, if it’s the latter then Ronaldo is the winner.
That’s because YouGov have released their annual list of the most admired people in the world and Ronaldo ranks higher than Messi yet again.
Ronaldo is the most admired sportsmen, placing 6th in the world. Meanwhile, Messi trails behind him in 11th.
Basketball legend Michael Jordan is 13th - no doubt aided by his ‘Last Dance’ documentary. Cricket’s Virat Kohli comes in at 16.
Check out the top 20 below as Barack Obama beats Bill Gates to top spot:
Interestingly, YouGov also compared where Ronaldo and Messi rank in different countries with the Portuguese more admired in 32 of the 42 countries and territories surveyed.
More than 45,000 people in 42 countries and territories were interviewed the compile the annual list and YouGov explained their methodology: “From January to March this year YouGov gathered open-ended nominations from panellists across 42 countries and territories, asking them simply: 'Thinking about people alive in the world today, which [man or woman] do you most admire?'
"These nominations were then used to compile a list of the 20 men and 20 women who received the most nominations and were nominated in at least four countries. An additional 5-10 popular local figures were added to the lists for individual countries.
"In fieldwork conducted from May to September, we used these lists to poll each of the 42 areas asking two questions: 'who do you truly admire?', where respondents could make multiple selections, and 'who do you MOST admire?', where they could only pick one. These two numbers were combined into a percentage share of admiration, displayed to the right of each name in the graphic above and table below, which shows the full results for every country including local celebrities and public figures.
So, according to YouGov's research, Ronaldo is more universally liked than Messi.
Don't blame us...