Football
Lionel Messi World Cup victory post breaks Instagram record
Lionel Messi’s Argentina world champions post has become the most liked picture in the history of Instagram – overtaking an image of an egg.
That post got 56.1million likes but Messi’s image of him lifting aloft the World Cup after Argentina beat France in Sunday’s World Cup final has now raced past it.
In the aftermath of Argentina’s thrilling penalty shootout win over France, the PSG star took to Instagram to post 10 pictures of the celebrations in Qatar.
In the time since he uploaded it, Messi’s post has racked up a staggering 60 million likes, with the forward also surpassing 402million followers on the social media platform.
‘Thank you very much to my family, to all who support me and also to all who believed in us. We demonstrate once again that Argentines when we fight together and united we are capable of achieving what we set out to do.
‘The merit belongs to this group, which is above individualities, it is the strength of all fighting for the same dream’.
It surpassed Ronaldo’s post from last month – an advert for Louis Vuitton ahead of the World Cup in which the Portuguese star and Messi were seen playing chess that had accumulated 41.9 million likes.
Ronaldo is still the most-followed person on Instagram though, with a staggering tally of 519 million.
Last month he became the first person ever to reach 500 million followers on the social media site.
The Portuguese star leads the way in terms of followers with Messi a clear distance behind in second – the two are the only athletes inside the top 10.
Kylie Jenner, Selena Gomez, Dwayne Johnson, Ariana Grande, Kim Kardashian, Beyonce, Khloe Kardashian and Justin Bieber complete the top 10.
The record for ‘likes’ was previously held by Chris Godfrey, who uploaded a photo of an egg in January 2019.
The photo ended up getting 56.1 million likes, with the aim of surpassing the then-most liked Instagram post, a picture of Kylie Jenner’s daughter which had 18.6 million likes.
Ronaldo got 32.6 million likes in October 2021 for the announcement that his partner Georgina Rodriguez was pregnant, while Messi’s post of his advert with Ronaldo got 32.2 million likes.
Messi had a huge impact in the final in Qatar as he scored twice, while he also converted his penalty in the shootout.
It completed a fairytale final World Cup for the 35-year-old Paris Saint-Germain star, who won the one medal missing from his collection.
Messi and his team-mates flew from Qatar back to Argentina on Monday, where they celebrated their World Cup win with thousands of jubilant fans in Buenos Aires.
