Lamine Yamal's New Record
The young Culé winger broke another record in 2025, surpassing other world soccer stars.
Lamine Yamal sets a new record, surpassing Cristiano, Messi, and Mbappé
The young FC Barcelona icon, fresh off his victory in the Spanish Super Cup, broke another record, this time on social media, surpassing legendary figures in world football.
He was the player who saw the biggest growth in followers on social media in 2025. According to Football Benchmark, Lamine Yamal's follower base grew by 58%, or, in other words, an impressive 38.6 million users. It should be noted that Raphinha and Pedri had higher growth in percentage terms, but in absolute terms of followers, they failed to match their teammate.
Growing more than Cristiano, Messi, and Mbappé
The stars who marked an era in European and world soccer managed to achieve single-digit growth percentages, although Cristiano Ronaldo achieved a growth of 21.7 million followers, which would only represent three percent in the last year.
Lionel Messi and Kylian Mbappé were also overshadowed in this report, as although they grew by 6.1 and 7.4 million respectively, this only represents relatively low growth for these established players, due to their high number of pre-existing followers.
Strong presence of Barcelona and Real Madrid
In this ranking of the top 10 players with the highest social media growth in 2025, one of the recurring patterns is that players from Barcelona and Madrid occupy eight of the ten places in the table. Raphinha, Marcus Rashford, Robert Lewandowski, and Trent Alexander-Arnold are some of the names that fill the list.
New interest in the next generation
Raphinha, Pedri, and Lamine Yamal have all grown exponentially over the past year, forming the trio that leads the relative growth percentage ranking, with Pedri and his 78% growth putting him at the top of the list, followed by Raphinha with 66% and Lamine Yamal with 58% growth in followers.
