It is not unknown how much hatred football players receive now a days, specially online! From Ronaldo to Messi or Benzema to Lewandowski – no one is exempted from the keyboard warriors. But like football records, no one comes close to Ronaldo when its about receiving hateful tweets or posts on various social medium.
Recently Ofcom and The Alan Turing Institute have released a list of top 10 players who received the greatest number of abusive tweets from 13 August 2021 to 24 January 2022 and Ronaldo has topped that with ease! According to that research, Cristiano Ronaldo received 12,520 abusive tweets in that time period averaging 85 tweets a day! But he also received the most tweets overall, 576,915, meaning 2.2 per cent of the messages he received were abusive.
Maguire was second, receiving 8,954 abusive messages, which worked out at 14.90 per cent of the tweets he received. Many of these messages were sent in response to an apology tweet he made following a defeat to Manchester City.
8 out of those 10 players played for Manchester United last season and 2 others player were Harry Kane from Tottenham Hotspur and Jack Grealish from Man City.
Other United players who received significant abuse include Fernandes, David de Gea, Fred, Jesse Lingard – who now plays for Nottingham Forest – Rashford and Paul Pogba, who has joined Juventus.
Let’s check the top 10 list of players who received the greatest number of abusive tweets –
10. David De gea
9. Paul Pogba
8. Jack Grealish
7. Jesse Lingard
6. Fred
5. Harry Kane
4. Bruno Fernandes
3. Marcus Rashford
2. Harry Maguire
1. Ronaldo