Cristiano Ronaldo rules over Lionel Messi on Instagram

While Lionel Messi beat this year's favourite Virgil van Dijk and his arch-rival Cristiano Ronaldo to lift an unprecedented sixth Ballon d'Or last December, he still has a lot of catching up to do against his rival on the social media front.

As per a research conducted by livefootballtickets.com, Ronaldo was the most mentioned footballer on Instagram. With 64,03,853 hashtags, he beat his next opponent by over 5 times with the reigning Ballon d'Or and the FIFA Best winner coming second with 12,09,206 hashtags. It should also be noted that his synonymous copyrighted phrase CR7 wasn't included in the research. Virgil van Dijk found himself trailing at the 12th position on the list of most mentioned Ballon d'Or nominees, trailing all members of Liverpool's tormenting forward line trio of Mohamed Salah, Sadio Mane and Roberto Firmino.

Real Madrid duo Eden Hazard and Karim Benzema with Salah complete the top five.The top 10 mentioned Ballon d'Or nominees on Instagram are as follows:

10. Son Heung-min (Tottenham Hotspur) #sonheungmin – 94,191 hashtags

9. Robert Lewandowski (Bayern Munich) #robertlewandowski – 101,435 hashtags

8. Sadio Mane (Liverpool) #sadiomane – 142,268 hashtags

7. Antoine Griezmann (Barcelona) #antoinegriezmann – 205,194 hashtags

6. Kylian Mbappe (Paris Saint-Germain) #kylianmbappe – 210,013 hashtags

5. Mohamed Salah (Liverpool) #mohamedsalah – 236,594 hashtags

4. Karim Benzema (Real Madrid) #karimbenzema – 295,470 hashtags

3. Eden Hazard (Real Madrid) #edenhazard – 355,973 hashtags

2. Lionel Messi (Barcelona) #lionelmessi – 1,209,206 hashtags

1. Cristiano Ronaldo (Juventus) #cristianoronaldo – 6,403,853 hashtags

It was also released last year that Cristiano Ronaldo became the highest earner on Instagram in 2019, earning more from Instagram than his Juventus salary.