Neymar is the 7th most popular player in the World

We already knew that Neymar is in fact the most popular player in Brazil, but this week’s study from a sports marketing agency called Repucom, has now shed us some light on who are most well-known footballers in the World. If it’s true that indeed there’s no one with a more marketable factor than Neymar in Brazil, the same can’t exactly be said about the Brazilian star popularity status when the scope of the analysis switches the entire World…

The following ranking shows us that the Real Madrid forward Cristiano Ronaldo is currently the most popular football player in the World, immediately followed by Neymar‘s teammate in Barcelona, Lionel Messi. The two seem to be in a category of their own when it comes to global awareness, leaving all the other 8 candidates miles away according to their DBI scores reported in these standings. It’s also not by chance that both Real Madrid and Barcelona were ranked the richest football clubs in the World earlier this year, as together they contribute with a total of 6 players to this ranking.

It’s also important to note that Neymar is the youngest player making the cut into this top 10 ranking and at the age of 22, one can only expect the Brazil international to get closer to the top in the years to come. Moreover, Neymar‘s popularity levels are also likely to keep increasing in a near future, since he’ll only complete his first year in Europe in a month from now.

With 2014 FIFA World Cup in Brazil kicking off in exactly 14 days and with Neymar drawing most of the attentions when it comes to analyze the “Escrete“, his popularity and visibility will probably reach a new peak during June and July.

Let’s now take a look at the full standings for the 10 most popular/marketable players in the World, in 2014:

#	Player	DBI Score	Global Awareness	FB #	Twitter #
1	Cristiano Ronaldo	79.49	83.87%	82M	26M
2	Lionel Messi	75.87	76.07%	57M	2M
3	Gerard Piqué	62.90	58.08%	12M	8M
4	Fernando Torres	62.69	59.64%	3M	2M
5	Wayne Rooney	59.47	55.82%	20M	9M
6	Andrés Iniesta	59.47	55.82%	20M	9M
7	Neymar Jr	59.36	53.33%	22M	11M
8	Iker Casillas	59.09	49.43%	18M	1M
9	Zlatan Ibrahimovic	59.07	55.81%	15M	1M
10	Thierry Henry	57.56	51.62%	16M	0.3M

Sources: repucom.net / ronaldo7.net / financenews24.com