It seems that Manchester United and their most famous star, Cristiano Ronaldo, were the source of the most hateful comments made by English Premier League fans for a recent six-month period.
It is never easy being one of the elites of a given sport. Especially when it comes to the most popular sports in the world, and a notable league like the EPL. So it should come as no surprise then that the 13-time EPL champions and their most well-known athlete Ronaldo was the top target of unhappy fans during last season.
Rivals Manchester City have dominated the league over the last two years, and after a second-place finish in 2020-2021, Man U fans were hoping for another championship last season. However, the team delivered a sixth place finish in the table in 2021-2022 and heard all about their disappointing play on social media from fans.
In a study conducted by the Alan Turing Foundation and Ofcom — and mined for data by SafeBettingSites.com — from August 2021 to January of this year, it was discovered that three Man U players were the most trolled among 2 million EPL-related tweets.
Portuguese superstar and soccer legend Ronaldo received 12,520 abusive tweets during that time period. Almost 4,000 more than his teammate and Man U captain, Harry Maguire, who earned 8,954 tweets from angry fans. Coming up in third was Marcus Rashford with 2,557 hate tweets thrown his way.
The non-Manchester United player that EPL fans wanted to inform of their dissatisfaction the most was Tottenham star Harry Kane who was the focus of 2,127 cranky posts.
Soccer fans in Europe have long been known for their deep passion and borderline obsession with their favorite futbol teams. Ronaldo being the top source of anger is no shocker and was put in full view during a game last season where fans bombarded him with hate while walking off the field during a game. The verbal abuse even led the soccer legend to slap a phone out of a fan’s hand.
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