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The latest international scientific study, in which the Carlos III University of Madrid participated, found that the historic football conflict… Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo It goes beyond purely athletic boundaries and is linked to the ideological and political orientations of fans.
The Spanish “Marca” newspaper reports.The study, conducted by researchers from the Carlos III University of Madrid, the National University of Singapore and the Nanyang Technological University, found that “progressive-oriented people generally prefer Messi, while conservatives tend to choose Cristiano Ronaldo.”
Teresa Gil López, a professor in the Department of Social Sciences at the Carlos III University of Madrid and the Juan Linz Institute, explained that political ideology is “the most powerful and decisive individual factor in predicting preference,” after neutralizing demographic factors, the extent of media use, and the personal and cognitive characteristics of the participants.
“More progressive respondents prefer Messi, and more conservative respondents prefer Ronaldo. There is also a striking interaction effect between age and political ideology, as the effect of political orientation is more pronounced in younger groups, while the effect gradually diminishes in older groups.”
The study’s authors noted that these results should not be interpreted as conclusive or definitive judgments about specific fan tastes, but rather, “this finding indicates the existence of underlying currents and values underlying personal choices that influence social and political life.”
Saifuddin Ahmed, a researcher at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University, said the study “does not make a judgment about anyone’s taste, nor does it claim that politics determines an individual’s football preference automatically, inevitably and inevitably”.
He emphasized that the study shows that “the line between our political identity and our cultural life has become much thinner than most of us think, and the rivalry between Messi and Ronaldo, which we all experience as a purely personal issue, actually reflects stories expressing broader fundamental values.”
The same researcher added: “Most people who prefer one of these two players feel that this preference is something very personal to them, and it has to do with special memories, games they’ve watched and styles of play that excite them, which is definitely real.”
“However, beneath this personal layer, our data suggest another layer related to the values and orientations that organize our political lives, and this finding does not eliminate the personal dimension, but simply shows that it is not the only factor.”
This work, published in the Social Science Research Network, was the result of a cross-border electronic sociological survey conducted between April and May 2026 and was based on a large sample of 10,661 participants selected by quota sampling in 26 countries.
In selecting the countries, the study took into account the diversity of football culture, economic growth and political systems, while the selections were balanced in each country by age and gender to approximate the actual distribution of the adult population as closely as possible.
The data collection process included additional measures to control for ideological and political orientations, demographic variables, and media consumption habits, in addition to a series of items and scales adopted to assess participants’ personality and cognitive awareness.
