When I discussed the results of the following study with some colleagues, they pointed out to me the contradiction between the perceptions of certain politicized sectors and the sensibilities of the majority (who are more removed from politics). On the one hand, Lionel Messi has been criticized by “anti-imperialist” groups for taking a photo with President Donald Trump during a ceremony with his team, Inter Miami—as Major League Soccer (MLS) champions—and even in the Middle East, many fans burned “La Pulga’s” jerseys. On the other hand, Cristiano Ronaldo has for years been associated with the Palestinian cause against Israel based on various fake videos and photos in which he supposedly supports that cause.
I came across an incredible study from April to May 2026 on the rivalry between Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo and how our soccer preferences say much more about us than we realize. It’s called “Political Identity Beyond Politics: The Messi-Ronaldo Preference Across 26 Countries.” This research analyzed more than 10,000 people in 26 countries, and the results showed that people with a more liberal ideology (using liberal in the American sense, that is, progressive) tend to prefer Messi, while more conservative respondents lean toward Cristiano Ronaldo. This is a recent preprint published on SSRN (an article not yet peer-reviewed), produced by prestigious researchers from NTU (Singapore), NUS (Singapore), and Carlos III University of Madrid: Saifuddin Ahmed, Kokil Jaidka, Muhammad Ehab Rasu, and Teresa Gil-López, specialists in political communication, digital platforms, public opinion, and computational social science.
I found it very interesting for three main reasons: first, because the study shows that the preference for Ronaldo is linked to traits such as authoritarianism and high self-esteem, suggesting that his image of individual dominance and personal excellence resonates with those values, while Messi is associated with a more community-oriented and reserved profile, and is perceived as a humble, team-oriented player.
Second, consuming news via short-form video platforms (such as TikTok) also predicts a greater affinity for the Portuguese striker, possibly because the architecture of these platforms reinforces his style of public presentation, but the Argentine’s image appeals to those who engage in greater cognitive reflection—that is, thinking that is more analytical than intuitive.
And third, this connection between politics and culture is much stronger among younger generations, who have grown up in environments marked by greater political sorting and tend to align their personal tastes with their ideological identities. What is fascinating is that this phenomenon is a global trend that recurs in completely different cultures—from Argentina to South Korea to Indonesia—demonstrating that soccer is a universal language for our psychological dispositions.
Of course, many will be thinking of the famous George Lakoff and his book “No pienses en un elefante” (2004). In it, Lakoff asserts that “the conservative (political) family is structured around the image of the strict father who believes in the necessity and value of authority, who is capable of teaching his children self-discipline and how to compete in a competitive world where they will succeed if they are strong, assertive, and disciplined.” On the other hand, Lakoff argues that progressives are shaped by “the model of protective parents, who believe they must understand and support their children, listen to them, and give them freedom and trust in others, with whom they must cooperate.”
Beyond its widespread use, Lakoff’s analysis remains brilliant. In his view, understanding a community-oriented figure like Lionel Messi requires greater cognitive and analytical effort because progressives often suffer from what cognitive science calls “hypocognition—the lack of the ideas you need, the absence of a predefined, relatively simple framework that can be evoked with just one or two words.” Lakoff clarifies that this is not a trait inherent to any ideology, since conservatives also suffered from hypocognition in the past, particularly when Republican Barry Goldwater lost the 1964 election to Democrat Lyndon B. Johnson. However, Lakoff stated that over the subsequent four decades, conservative thinkers have worked strategically to create language and ideas, resulting in the fact that today “they have filled in their conceptual gaps”. This remains the case even in 2026.
But I don’t want to stop here: let’s dig deeper. Why are preferences for Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi associated with certain political leanings all over the world?
As Lakoff explains in the work I mention, these conceptual structures have a material and neurobiological basis. Neuroscience shows that the concepts that structure our long-term thinking “are embedded in the synapses of our brain”. Both liberal-progressives and conservatives, then, possess both structures.
Just as Lakoff asserts that we all possess both neural structures (strict father and protective parents), the Dutch primatologist Frans de Waal argues in his insightful work “El bonobo y los diez mandamientos” (2013) that humans are “bipolar apes” who genetically harbor the dual behavior of our evolutionary relatives. Thus, the type of sports leadership exemplified by Cristiano Ronaldo is linked to chimpanzee morality, while that of Lionel Messi is linked to bonobo morality.
