Despite early exits, Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi were the stars of the 2018 World Cup, with Neymar close behind, according to data from global football publisher Goal. Over the course of the World Cup, more than 159 million fans engaged with Goal through a combination of its websites, mobile apps and social accounts, 111 million of which came through its 38 int'l websites. The global football publisher revealed that although Messi’s Argentina and Ronaldo’s Portugal failed to make it beyond the round of 16, both players dominated user interest. Ronaldo narrowly beat Messi as the player responsible for generating the most traffic to Goal, with 10.3 million page views attributed to the Portuguese attacker, compared to 9.8 million for Messi and 6 million for Neymar. Behind Neymar, in terms of global page views, were France's Kylian Mbappé (3.1 million), Croatia's Luka Modric (2.5 million), France's Antoine Griezmann (2.1 million), England's Harry Kane (2 million), Egypt's Mohamed Salah (1.4 million) and Belgium's Romelu Lukaku (1.2 million) (Perform).
