Twitter has revealed the 10 sports stars that have been mentioned the most frequently by its UK users in 2017.
The list is dominated by figures from the world of football, though first place goes to UFC star Conor McGregor, who contested his first professional boxing match in August against Floyd Mayweather (fifth on the list).
Here’s the list in full…
1 Conor McGregor
As we explained in the introduction, it’s hardly a surprise to see the Irishman is number one. He might have lost to Mayweather in Las Vegas, but the hype surrounding the fight guaranteed McGregor would be soaring high in this list.
2 Paul Pogba
Having finished his first full season back at Manchester United with a goal in the Europa League final, Pogba seems guaranteed to produce major talking points in every game he plays.
3 Romelu Lukaku
One of the best strikers in the Premier League last season with Everton, he was strongly linked with a move to Chelsea in the early weeks of summer. He eventually moved to Manchester United for big money, helping him guarantee his spot at number three.
4 Jose Mourinho
The Manchester United boss steered the club back into the Champions League by way of victory in the Europa League final. As with Pogba, a day rarely seems to go by without him featuring in the headlines – and people’s twitter feeds.
5 Floyd Mayweather
As mentioned earlier, the other half of the biggest fight of the year. Mayweather beat McGregor, retiring from boxing immediately after it with an undefeated record.
6 Wayne Rooney
After surpassing Sir Bobby Charlton’s goalscoring record at Manchester United, Rooney made the move back to boyhood club Everton – all enough to guarantee lots of people were tweeting about him.
7 Neymar
After generating lots of tweets for his performance for Barcelona as they overturned a 4-0 first leg deficit against Paris Saint-Germain in the Champions League, Neymar then became the most expensive footballer in the world ever when he made the move to French club.
8 Cristiano Ronaldo
Cristiano Ronaldo and his Real Madrid teammates helped themselves to La Liga and a third Champions League title in four seasons. Yet again, he’s shortlisted for another Ballon d’Or having been a key factor in the Spanish club’s successes.
9 Philippe Coutinho
The Liverpool star was the subject of summer-long interest from Barcelona, who didn’t quite seem to understand what ‘not for sale’ meant. He remains at Anfield for now, but with reports saying Barca might return for him next summer, expect to see the Brazilian in the 2018 edition of this list.
10 Arsene Wenger
Although Arsene Wenger might well have guided Arsenal to another FA Cup at the end of last season, his presence in this list is almost certainly down to the club’s failures and the extraordinary Twitter reaction to pretty much every negative result they suffer.
