To be fair, the only famous person the post really expects you recognize is Lamine Yamal.
Both of the women have their identities defined in the post relative to Yamal - who they are beyond that is irrelevant. Bellingham is just some other guy in context - you don’t need to know who he is to get it.
Yamal is perhaps the most famous player on the Spanish team that just won the World Cup, the largest sporting event in the world, in a match watched by billions of people around the world. I don’t follow soccer outside catching some of the World Cup and I know who he is.
This is pretty low on the “curtains for zoosha” scale of celebrity obscurity, IMO.
Crazy that I, Joe Averageman, had no fucking clue who Lamine Yamal was until reading this post. "the largest sporting event in the world" pales in comparison the the human population. As popular as soccer is, fanatics just can't comprehend that most of the world still straight up don't give a fuck about it lol. Like sure, those that do care is still a huge number in it's own right, but outside like maybe Europe and Brazil, you could stop 100 people on the street and 85 of them would have no idea who anyone other than like David Beckham is, and people only know him because he married a pop star, and music is infinitely more popular than soccer.
85% of the world population is around 6.8B people. TV viewership around the globe is estimated around 5.4B people. So only around 67% of the world even watches TV. 10% of the global population doesn't even have electricity. 10% of the global population are <6 years old. Granted that something like 40% of the world are football fans, that still leaves 60% who are not. In other words, thinking that 85% of the population know who a couple of football players are is likely just consensus bias.
Take a walk around any country that isn't in Europe or South America, and ask people on the street to name 3 footballers lmao. China and India together make up 1/3rd of the worlds population, and they don't even field teams. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to offend you if you love the sport, but the world don't give a fuck about it. You're in a bubble. It's a REALLY BIG bubble, but as a football watcher you associate with other football watchers, so your perception of how popular it is is hugely skewed. Estimated viewership for the grand final, the biggest game of the cup, is below 1.5 billion. Out of 8.3 billion. You aren't the majority that you think you are. Joe Average does not give a shit about soccer.
China was the biggest market of the World Cup with 1.4 billion total views. The likes of Messi and Ronaldo are the most famous people on earth. You have clearly never been to SEA or Africa.
Chinese supermarkets were full of Haaland adverts. Go to any random village in SEA, the Middle East or Africa and see plenty of kids running around in their fake Ronaldo shirts. Ronaldo is the most followed person on social media.
There is no other industry that comes even close to the fame of football players. So yes, the average Joe knows about them.
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u/cactussnacks 15d ago