Andres Iniesta scoring on the social media playground

INDIA: Messi, Ronaldo or Suarez - who is winning the hearts and minds of football fans in the run up to the World Cup? Turns out that SAP has some clue as it has used its Social Media Analysis tool to understand who the most favoured players in Social Media are. The key results show a comparison of the critically-acclaimed vs. socially-favoured football players revealing that Andres Iniesta is ranked first in terms of the most socially favoured, scoring 90 per cent in the ratio of positive to negative sentiment in all posts, despite being ranked as the fifth best global football player by the International Business Times.

Although Radamel Falcao is by far the most talked about player in social media (topping the chart at 68,782 mentions in the last week), the news that he will not be playing for Colombia in the World Cup after failing to recover from a serious knee injury has had a dramatic impact on his fans. The overall net sentiment of social media posts in relation to Falcao and the World Cup is currently at -57 per cent.

Another popular player, Christiano Ronaldo's race to be fit for the World Cup is also having an impact on the overall net sentiment of social media posts which is at -63 per cent, as per SAP Social Media Analytics by Netbase.