With Euro 2024 now in the history books, we decided to take a look at which players were the biggest talking points of the tournament.
Using social listening data from Brandwatch, we tracked how many posts on social media platforms were made about each player during Euro 2024, from the first day of the tournament (June 14th) up to the day following the Final (July 15th). The posts were then also analysed to also discover which players had the highest number of positive posts about them, as well as the highest number of negative posts.
The Players With The Most Social Media Posts About Them During Euro 2024
He may be at the twilight of his footballing career now, but Cristiano Ronaldo remains as one of the most talked about players in the sport. Despite being eliminated in the Quarter Finals, the drama of Portugal’s penalty shoot-out win over Slovenia was enough to help generate nearly six million posts about Ronaldo.
In second place was Spain’s teenage sensation, Lamine Yamal. The Barcelona wonderkid amassed 4.25 million posts during the tournament.
France’s Kylian Mbappe rounds off the top three with 4 million posts about Real Madrid’s newest superstar signing. Ronaldo, Yamal and Mbappe had more social posts about them than the rest of the top 10 combined.
England had the most players in the top 10, four in total. Jude Bellingham was the most talked about England player with 2.34 million posts, followed by Bukayo Saka and Harry Kane. The England trio ranked fourth, fifth and sixth respectively. Phil Foden also featured in the top 10, ranking ninth with 1.17 million posts.
Elsewhere in the top 10, Toni Kroos’ swan song propelled him up to seventh with 1.58 million posts. Turkey’s Arda Guler was one of the breakthrough stars of the tournament and had 1.50 million posts about his performances. And finally, Dani Carvajal narrowly beat Spanish teammates Rodri and Nico Williams to a top 10 spot with 1.09 million posts during the tournament.
The Players With The Highest Number of Positive Social Media Posts About Them During Euro 2024
From all of the social media posts about each player during Euro 2024, we were also able to analyse the sentiment of those posts to discover which players had the highest volume of positive posts about them throughout the tournament.
Once again, Ronaldo tops the table with 1.17 million posts that had a positive sentiment. It should be noted however, that not all posts may have been positive about Ronaldo himself. For example, posts celebrating his penalty miss against Slovenia would be interpreted as being a positive post about Ronaldo but not necceserily the type of positivity he might be looking for!
Ronaldo had double the amount of positive posts than Yamal in second place with 580k.
Despite having the eighth most total posts, Arda Guler rises up to third when looking just at posts with a positive sentiment. An impressive 32% of all his posts were of a positive nature, the highest percentage in the top 10.
Bukayo Saka had a higher percentage of positive posts than both Mbappe and Bellingham which elevates him over them up to fourth for total positive posts. Only 7% of posts about Mbappe were of a positive nature, tied with Phil Foden for the lowest of all players in the overall top 10.
Although they didn’t have enough to make the top 10 for total posts, both Kobbie Mainoo and Rodri cracked the top 10 for total positive posts about them. Mainoo had the third highest percentage of players in the top 10 at 17%, which was also the highest percentage of positive posts for any England player with at least 100,000 posts about them.
The Players With The Highest Number of Negative Social Media Posts About Them During Euro 2024
The top 10 players with the highest number of negative posts during the tournament are the same as the top 10 players with the most total posts but in a slightly different order.
Ronaldo once again had the most posts, this time with a negative sentiment to them. 20% of all posts about Ronaldo were positive, with 20% also negative.
Mbappe had the second most with 869,000 negative posts about the France captain, 22% of all posts in the total.
Although Saka had the highest number of positive posts from the England squad, he also had the highest number of negative posts. 24% of posts about Saka were negative, compared to 15% which were positive.
The player with the highest percentage of negative posts from all players with 100,000+ total posts was Phil Foden. 26% of posts about the Premier League Player of the Season were negative, 299,000 in total.
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