Messi’s World Cup-winning photo becomes most popular social media post

Lionel Messi’s Instagram post celebrating Argentina’s World Cup triumph is now officially the most liked social media post of all time. The Argentine superstar has surpassed the record which had been set on a TikTok video set by Filipino-born American singer and social media personality Bella Poarch back in 2020.

Following Argentina’s thrilling penalty shootout win over France, Paris Saint-Germain star Messi took to Instagram to post 10 pictures of the celebrations in Qatar. Messi has long been seen as one of football’s greatest ever players, and going off his post on Instagram, there were a lot of people happy to see the Argentine superstar finally add the World Cup to his illustrious CV.

In the time since he uploaded it, Messi’s post has racked up a staggering 64.5 million likes, with the forward’s follower count also rapidly increasing on the social media platform — now at 404 million. Messi accompanied the post with a caption that read: ‘WORLD CHAMPIONS!!!!!!! I dreamed it so many times, I wanted it so much that I still haven’t fallen, I can’t believe it……’

‘Thank you very much to my family, to all who support me and also to all who believed in us. We demonstrate once again that Argentines when we fight together and united we are capable of achieving what we set out to do. ‘The merit belongs to this group, which is above individualities, it is the strength of all fighting for the same dream.’

Poarch (pictured) no longer has the most liked post on any social media platform with her TikTok video from August 2020. The video showed her lip-synching ‘M to the B’ by British rapper Millie B.

Sportsmail reported earlier today that Messi’s photo had become the most popular Instagram photo of all time — surpassing ‘the egg’ which got 56.1 million likes. Since the timing of that story on Tuesday morning, Messi’s photo has gained an extra eight million likes with an additional two million followers. With the figures ever increasing, it could be difficult for any social media post to match that now set by Messi.

His post also surpassed Cristiano Ronaldo’s from last month — an advert for Louis Vuitton ahead of the World Cup in which the Portuguese star and Messi were seen playing chess that had accumulated 41.9 million likes. Ronaldo (pictured) is still the most-followed person on Instagram though, with a staggering tally of 519 million. Last month he became the first person ever to reach 500 million followers on the social media site. The Portuguese star leads the way in terms of followers with Messi a clear distance behind in second — the two are the only athletes inside the top 10.

Kylie Jenner, Selena Gomez, Dwayne Johnson, Ariana Grande, Kim Kardashian, Beyonce, Khloe Kardashian and Justin Bieber complete the top 10. Messi had a huge impact in the final in Qatar as he scored twice, while he also converted his penalty in the shootout. The PSG forward and his team-mates flew from Qatar back to Argentina on Monday, where they celebrated their World Cup win with millions of jubilant fans in Buenos Aires.

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