The Brazil vs. Germany game earlier this week was devastating for this year’s hosts, with the sad faces of their fans been made into countless memes and shared relentlessly across social, making it the most tweeted about sports game ever with over 35.6 million tweets posted throughout the game. As much as they have been made a mockery of on Twitter, it’s a totally different story on Instagram.
Stats from Instagram below show that Brazilian players make up 7 of the 10 top players on Instagram, with their star player Neymar blazing into first place with over 2.6 million more fans than Cristiano Ronaldo of Portugal who holds the second place.
With comments on Neymar’s Instagram account ranging from football associated comments such as:
“I’m still Brazilian, and I’m very proud of my country and of one of its best players, you!”
To female fans commenting from a completely different perspective:
“You’re so hot!”
“I love you!”
“Why are you so beautiful?”
It’s easy to see that on Instagram, due to its concentrated focus on visual content, the majority of engagement is not in regards to football, but the attractiveness of the players, with adoring female fans gushing over their love for the players. This is evidenced in that Neymar’s top performing post throughout the world cup gained over 1.3 million likes and over 94,000 comments, with the majority of engagements coming from the “fangirl” majority of his 8.8m follower base.
It begs the question, is a football player’s social success less based on fancy footwork and more on how well they can take a selfie… #nofilter.
