Social media has boomed across the world in recent years and the biggest football stars are often now the most followed people on the planet.

Take Cristiano Ronaldo, he was always destined for greatness even since the early days at Manchester United, but nobody could have predicted he would one day own the most followed Instagram account in the world.

Yep, you read that correctly, the Man Utd icon's 472m Insta followers does indeed make him the most popular person on the entire app.

But is it just Ronaldo that has reached such stratospheric heights in the footballing world or have his rivals managed to get anywhere close?

Fortunately, PopFoot have come back with a bang in their off-season listicle bonanza and this time have decided to calculate the 20 most followed footballers based upon their Instagram, Facebook and Twitter following.

We've ranked their findings for you below, including each star's total number of followers rounded up or down to the nearest million.

The 20 most followed footballers

20. Antoine Griezmann - 67m
19. Toni Kroos - 72m
18. Luis Suarez - 80m
17. Mesut Ozil - 82m
16. Mohamed Salah - 85m
15. Kaka - 88m
14. Paul Pogba - 91m
13. Andres Iniesta - 93m
12. Gareth Bale - 95m
11. Kylian Mbappe - 97m

It's incredible that we aren't even into the top 10 yet and we're already approaching the 100 million mark.

It's also quite a surprise that a few names on this list aren't in the top category. Mbappe, Bale and Liverpool star Salah we would expect to have absolutely enormous followings.

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10. Marcelo - 99m
9. James Rodriguez - 100m
8. Zlatan Ibrahimovic - 103m
7. Sergio Ramos - 103m
6. Karim Benzema - 116m
5. David Beckham - 128m
4. Ronaldinho - 143m
3. Neymar - 323m
2. Lionel Messi - 462m
1. Cristiano Ronaldo - 726m

Woah, okay, so Ronaldo is absolutely clear. There might be an argument on who's the GOAT on the pitch but when it comes to profile and celebrity status, there's one easy winner.

Neymar is also well ahead of Ronaldinho and Beckham, his total of 323 million followers is more than double the two footballing legends.

Meanwhile Rodriguez and Marcelo making the top 10 over someone like Mbappe is quite frankly stunning and something that we would expect to change in the coming year or two.