For much of the last 15 years, the main debate in football has revolved around two men: Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo.
Whilst both are widely acknowledged as two of the greatest footballers of all time, fans and pundits have argued until they’re blue in the face about who is better.
Between them they have scored more than 1700 goals, and picked up 13 Ballon d’Or titles. They’ve both single-handedly changed games, and won dozens of trophies at both club and international level.
But it turns out maybe this isn’t as much of a debate as people may think it is.
A new survey from Ladbrokes has found that two-thirds of people don’t think Messi and Ronaldo are the two greatest players of all time.
A poll of 1,000 adults commissioned by Ladbrokes in support of its new Ladbucks tokens, has found that many people buck the trend when it comes to choosing their top two, with 33 per cent of people agreeing that Messi and Ronaldo were the undisputed GOATs.
Some 67 per cent believed the likes of Diego Maradona and Johan Cruyff were worthy of a spot in the top two.
Other findings from the Ladbucks study were that football was the third most disliked sport in the UK, with 18 per cent of people picking it as the sport they liked the least.
Only cricket (19 per cent) and boxing (21 per cent) were more unpopular.
Away from sport, there were some pretty controversial opinions as well. In music, 15 per cent of the public thought that Little Mix were the most overrated band in the UK, while 13 per cent were turned off by Oasis and One Direction, and 8 per cent disliked Coldplay.
And in TV, 14 per cent of people said they didn’t like Friends, while 12% don’t like Seinfeld and 12% didn’t enjoy watching The Simpsons.
Nicola McGeady of Ladbrokes says: “Our Ladbucks study found that when it came to music, film and sport, the UK has many divided opinions that buck the trend. There is no doubt that Little Mix and Coldplay are household favourites, but a sizeable minority found that they hit a duff note. We were also surprised to see Springfield favourite Homer Simpson and Joey Tribbiani top the list of most annoying TV characters.”
