Footballing GOAT Cristiano Ronaldo was the most trolled player last season, as per a new report out on Tuesday. The Portuguese footballer who currently plays for English club Manchester United was the most abused player on Twitter in the bygone footballing season 2021-22.
Ronaldo is followed by another Manchester United player and club captain Harry Maguire who was also heavily trolled last year. The report by The Alan Turing Institute and Ofcom revealed that three-fourths of the football players plying their trade in Premier League, England’s apex competition, received abuse online with the phenomenon a daily occurrence for some players.
The report employed a new machine-learning technology to reach the results by analysing 2.3 million messages aimed at PL players over last season’s first 5 months. A total of 60,000 abusive posts were found. It also observed at least one message of online abuse in the time period aimed at 68% of PL players.
One in 14 PL footballers faced online abuse every day. 12 players made up for around half of the online abuse, the report added. These players were trolled by an average of 15 messages every day.
Most trolled footballers:
The most trolled players were Cristiano Ronaldo with 12,520 abusive tweets, Harry Maguire with 8,954 and Marcus Rashford with 2,557. 5 other Manchester United players featured in the top 10 apart from Tottenham Hotspur player Harry Kane and Manchester City player Jack Grealish.
In terms of clubs whose players faced the most trolling, North London club Tottenham topped the list with 3.7 percent of the abusive tweets.
On the other hand, 57 percent of all messages directed at footballers were positive tweets.
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(With inputs from agencies)
