His adaptation more difficult than expected in Ligue 1 has not dented his popularity.
Far behind Kylian Mbappé, whose future fascinates the crowds, in the statistics table since the start of the season, Lionel Messi would nevertheless be far ahead of the world champion in terms of popularity with Internet users in France.
In any case, this is what the survey by Semrush, a global digital marketing specialist, concerning the most popular athletes suggests.
For each personality, this platform has, in fact, counted the online searches carried out over the year 2021 before establishing a monthly average.
If this reveals that the ranking of international sportsmen places a quintet of footballers - Lionel Messi, Kylian Mbappé, Karim Benzema, Cristiano Ronaldo and Neymar - at the top of the most sought-after personalities on the Web last year, she also says that the seven-fold Golden Ball dominates all of its counterparts.
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Online research trends relate in particular to football with 6 representatives in the top 10 which also include tennis players Novak Djokovic, Rafael Nadal, Roger Federer and Stefanos Tsitsipas.
Leo Messi clearly appears as the player of the year on the web with 6,120,000 searches in August when he transferred to PSG.
In number of average monthly requests over the year, the Argentinian playmaker exceeds one million (1,093,400) and is ahead of Kylian Mbappé (823,100), Karim Benzema (634,900), Cristiano Ronaldo (503,400) and Neymar (490 000).
Apart from football and tennis, French internet users have taken an interest in a few personalities from other disciplines.
The Olympic Games did not have a significant leverage effect except for a handful of sports medalists in Tokyo: in individual sports, judokas Teddy Riner (1,220,000 in July), Clarisse Agbégnénou (301,000 in July), fencer Romain Cannone (201,000 in July), swimmer Florent Manaudou (246,000 in August) and gymnast Simone Biles (450,000 in July) performed well.