Argentina leads in 2022 World Cup online support by fans

By Daniel Adaji

As the world cup kicked off on the November 20, 2022, many football fans have taken to the social media to express their excitement, sentiments and supports for the various teams of their choice. So far, the social media space has recorded over 460K Instagram hashtags and 5.7 billion TikTok views. According to Ticketgum.com, “It’s evident that football fanatics are pouring their excitement on social media to celebrate the world’s biggest sporting party.”

The FIFA World Cup is the most prestigious soccer competition in the world

The FIFA World Cup is the most prestigious soccer competition in the world. Played every four years, since the 1930s, the World Cup hosts the top 32 national teams in a month-long tournament. The host country is selected by FIFA’s Council.

This year’s world cup would be the first to be held in the Middle East with a spectacular opening ceremony inside Al Bayt Stadium, Qatar. A facility designed to resemble a traditional Bedouin tent. With France as the latest champion of the 2018 cup, the whole world anticipates the winner of this year’s competition.

A twitter sentiment analysis conducted by Ticketgum.com revealed that of the 32 teams participating in the event, Argentina has the highest online support score of 9.09 on a scale of 10 while Saudi Arabia has the least put at 1.52. Although, the Argentina National team is the most loved on twitter, there are no specific reasons for the massive support the country has received online, some suggestions on Quora showed that the support could be as result of Argentina being a third world country that has attempted to scale up its team over the years, others argued that the country often featured best players in the world like Maradona in the 80s.

Argentina has the highest online support score of 9.09 on a scale of 10

How the Analysis was done

Over 10,000 tweets were analysed to find the teams and players receiving the most positive tweets, negative tweets, and the most commonly used emojis. Footballers accumulating less than 15 Twitter mentions were excluded from the study. Tweets over an 8-day period (7th November – 14th November 2022) were examined.

By applying a PERCENTRANK formula across the following variables (i) total number of positive tweets (ii) % of positive tweets [+ve tweets/ (sum of +ve and -ve tweets], Ticketgum.com assigned  an online support score out of ten to each team and player.

Tweets identified as neutral were not taken into account for more precise results.

Subsequently, the scores were ranked in descending order to determine the team and player receiving the most support on social media.

All data was collected from 7th November to 14th November 2022 and is accurate as of then.

“Beating a slew of famous names, Dutch defender, Nathan Aké is the most loved on Twitter (9.20/10) with a staggering 92.86% of supportive tweets. French top scorer, Kylian Mbappé takes close second with his number of positive tweets (37) being 59% fewer than Nathan in first.

Close friends Messi (8.50/10) and Neymar (8.45/10) place third and fourth respectively with a slim difference in their final scores. Despite controversies, Ronaldo sits in fifth place (8.15/10) with the striker’s dedicated fanbase bagging him 188 positive tweets.”

With the opening ceremony, the stage is already set for the contest. It is not sure who would emerge the champion, but Argentina would have to work hard no to disappoint the large number of fans anticipating their victory.