Two days after he won the World Cup in Argentina, a carousel of photographs celebrating the triumph surpassed all other posts on the social media platform. The previous most-liked post was an image of an egg that received almost 56 million likes.
According to the Olympics website, the Argentinian football legend’s photo became the fastest to 50 million likes on social media.
“World Champions! I dreamed of it so many times, I wanted it so much that I still can’t believe it… Thank you very much to my family, to all who support me, and also to all who believed in us,” Lionel Messi wrote in the post. He further wrote “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 that was also the dream of all Argentines… We did it!”.
Lionel Messi is the second person to have more than 400 million followers on social media. He had 376 million followers before the World Cup began. As of today, it had almost 40 million likes, making it the most popular post by an athlete.