The Correlation Between Football & Life Choices: Messi vs Ronaldo
About the different factors impacting how people view football, such as football logic, geography, politics, & other demographical aspects. A study.
Debates are the most common football type of discussion on social media. They keep people talking about the sport opposing fans of certain entities against each other. Every football fanatic has been involved in a few debates trying to defend their opinion.
Now, a question arises. What influences people to take a side in a debate? To answer this question, I conducted a survey collecting exactly 2,000 answers and asking nineteen questions, mixing football opinions like trophy logic or Messi vs. Ronaldo, life opinions such as political ideology or abortion, and living conditions like family wealth and ethnicity.
Introduction
Accuracy of the survey
As said, my survey had nineteen questions about various logic and life conditions. It was made on google forms, and I activated the option to restrict users to one answer per account and device. If one wanted to sabotage the project, he would have had to vote multiple times on different devices and google accounts. While it is possible that such an event happened, the high sample of 2,000 participants makes up for the possible rare non-honest entries.
Other studies will also be used to confirm some of the results found from the survey. One is the University of Cambridge’s article titled: “Messi, Ronaldo, and the Politics of Celebrity Elections: Voting for the Best Soccer Player in the World” by Christopher J. Anderson, Luc Arrondel, et al. in March 2020. An article about the factors influencing the Ballon d’Or voting, including a visualization about the logical and life differences between Messi and Ronaldo supporters. This one will be useful for the first part of the article, while the Pew Research Center will be used to confirm the questions about life opinions and conditions through multiple studies.
Even though it is not a published piece of research, this survey and article can be considered trustworthy, and the results are representative of the sample who took this test: Followers of mine and the people who shared the survey online, proven by other sources.
Importance of the Messi vs. Ronaldo debate
This article aims to find correlations between different factors, whether football-related or not. Of the 19 questions asked, only one was about a football opinion: Who is the best player of our generation, Messi or Ronaldo?
The most popular sports debate in history. It is the only “closed” debate in football, in a way that almost everyone who takes part in it holds very fixed opinions, and future events will rarely change how both players are viewed by each of their fanbases. Hence, it is a fascinating topic to analyze psychologically wise. What exactly leads people to choose one or another?
Procedure
We will first look at the football logic used to make a choice, like the importance of legacy, trophy logic, natural on-ball ability, and the relevance of goals & assists. Then, we will examine the life opinions such as political ideology, religion, and conspiration. To complete the research, we will observe the living conditions, such as family wealth and ethnicity. All of those results will be compared to each other to find correlations but also, and mainly, to the famous Messi vs. Ronaldo question. Undoubtedly, the most interesting part will be the correlation between life aspects and the player debate in question in an attempt to explain which factors lead people to make certain choices.
After all the results and explanations are done, we will draw a general portrait of the main factors impacting Messi’s and Ronaldo’s supporters the most. This will lead to a conclusion.
*Trigger warning*
Some of the topics discussed in this article might be sensible, like religion and ethnicity. The goal is to find correlations between the factors presented and explain them, not to over-simplify by claiming direct causations; hence, it is essential to read the entire article before commenting. Let’s start.
Football logic
It is no wonder that football logic significantly impacts football opinions. Everyone watches football differently; not every action on the pitch is viewed equally by everyone. Football fans all have different definitions of what makes footballers better than others.
Messi vs. Ronaldo
Survey results
The first question of the survey was about the famous debate. To collect the responses from the participants, I asked the following question: Who do you think is the best player of our generation? With Messi and Ronaldo as options. After collecting 2,000 answers, 1715 (85.8%) consider Messi as our generation’s best player, while the other 285 (14.2%) rate Ronaldo higher.
This single poll result will be key for the rest of the article.
Correlations — Messi vs. Ronaldo
Legacy — Messi vs. Ronaldo
Legacy in football represents how footballers are remembered in history, with its main factors being career paths and iconic moments. To observe how much it mattered to the people filling out the survey, I asked the following question: Does legacy matter to you when ranking players?
To respond, the sample in question had to choose on a scale from 1 to 6 how important legacy was. “1” means that it doesn’t matter at all, while “6” implies that the logic in question was the best and only way to judge players. This way of assessing logics will be used in the entirety of the Football Logic section.
The average legacy score for people rating Ronaldo as the best player of our generation is 4.08, meaning that they consider it more valuable than useless. For people voting for Messi, the average score was 3.45, below the middle, meaning that those people think it is more useless than important.
The results are precise; people who rate Messi higher than Ronaldo are less prominent to care about how players are remembered in history than the ones who rank Ronaldo higher. Only 1 out of 5 Messi’s voters (19%) think that legacy is very important (votes 5 & 6), while almost half of Ronaldo’s voters think so (42%).
Trophies — Messi vs. Ronaldo
Trophy logic is a method to rate footballers based on the number of team trophies they won in their careers. To find the opinion of the people filling out my survey, I asked the following question: How important do you think trophies are when judging players?
Again, with options from 1 to 6. “1” indicating that trophies were completely useless when rating players, and “6” being that trophies were everything that mattered when rating footballers.
The average trophy score for the ones who voted for Ronaldo is 3.83, implying that the trophy logic holds more importance than not for them. Messi’s voters’ average score is 2.93, meaning they don’t consider it essential.
This time, the correlation is even stronger, especially for the extreme votes. Only 6% of Messi’s voters considered trophies as very important (5 & 6 answers), while almost 1 of 3 Ronaldo’s voters think so (32%)! The case is as diverse in the answers of people not considering trophies important (1 & 2 responses), where 38% of Messi’s voters voted such compared to only 13% of Ronaldo’s.
As mentioned in the introduction, this article published by Cambridge University also showed results about correlations between life and football opinions. In their study, we can see that Ronaldo’s voters consider trophies and victories important as their average coefficient score is above 1, while it is below 0 for Messi’s voters, implying that they consider trophies more useless than useful.
Ability — Messi vs. Ronaldo
To see how my respondents quantified natural talent, I asked: Is natural ability on the ball everything that matters when judging footballers?
The average on-ball ability score for people who voted for Messi as the best player of our generation is 3.48, while it is only 2.97 for Ronaldo’s voters.
Messi’s voters think that on-ball ability is essential, while Ronaldo’s voters believe not. The difference is even more significant when looking at the extremes. 39% of Ronaldo’s voters think that on-ball ability is not really necessary (1 & 2 answers), but only 18% of Messi’s voters believe so.
Cambdridge’s study once again found similar results to mine as Messi’s voters considered skill and talent very highly, with an average coefficient score of +1. On the contrary, Ronaldo’s voters combined an average coefficient score of just below 0.
Performances — Messi vs. Ronaldo
In a goal to see how individual performances were viewed in the process of rating players, here is what I asked: Are pure performances everything that matters when judging players?
The average performance score for people who voted for Messi as the best player of our generation is 4.44; however, for Ronaldo’s voters, the average score falls down at 3.65
As seen on the graphic above, people rating Messi as the best player of our generation tend to rate individual performances more importantly than people preferring Ronaldo.
Goals and Assists — Messi vs. Ronaldo
Regarding the necessity of goals and assists, here is the question that I asked: How important are goals and assists when rating players?
The average score for the importance of goals and assists turns out to be 4.09 for Ronaldo’s voters; Messi’s voters’ score, on the other hand, was only 3.66.
Advanced Statistics
After asking the question: How important are overall detailed statistics when rating players? Here are the results
The average score for Ronaldo’s voters regarding advanced statistics is 3.51. For Messi’s voters, the difference is relatively high, as their average score is 4.29, showing that they consider advanced statistics very importantly.
While Ronaldo’s voters preferred goals and assists, Messi’s voters favored advanced statistics, with an even larger difference.
The correlation is even more significant when looking at the people who think that advanced statistics (including G+A) hold less importance than goals and assists alone. 13.6% of Messi’s voters picked a lower number for the advanced statistic than the G+A one, while 47.7% of Ronaldo’s voters did so. Almost half of the sample.
Strongest correlations
To calculate the most significant correlations, I will count the difference between Messi’s and Ronaldo’s voters.
Trophy logic — Ronaldo: +30.4%
Advanced statistics — Messi: +22.4%
Performances — Messi: +21.6%
Legacy — Ronaldo: +18.4%
Ability — Messi: +17.2%
Goals & Assists — Ronaldo: +11.6%
Why? — Messi vs. Ronaldo
The results of the correlation between the Messi vs. Ronaldo debate and football logic are interesting, but they aren’t really meaningful if they’re not put in context and explained. Let’s see why such correlations exist between life and football opinions.
Why? Trophy & Legacy logic — Messi vs. Ronaldo
From the study, Ronaldo’s voters are more likely to agree that trophies and legacy are important than those who rate Messi higher.
This phenomenon can be explained as Ronaldo won more important trophies than Messi, 5 Champions League, and 1 Euro compared to Lionel’s 4 UCLs (3 as a starter) and 1 Copa America, which is considered less important than the European trophy. Trophy logic is the most significant correlation factor between football opinions and the Messi vs. Ronaldo debate.
“Winning? that's the most important to me. It's as simple as that.” — Ronaldo
“Sometimes you have to accept you can't win all the time.” — Messi
Ronaldo’s legacy may also seem more intriguing. He is present in the media, which creates storylines, like when he said that Juventus would come back against Atletico Madrid in 19/20. He is also portrayed as a hard worker and comes from a poor background, influencing young football fans to see him as their life idol. Funnily enough, Ronaldo named his perfume brand “Legacy”.
“Maybe they hate me because I’m too good!” — Ronaldo
People who consider Ronaldo the best player of our generation tend to care more about how he’s viewed by the general public and how impactful he is.
Why? Ability & Performance logic — Messi vs. Ronaldo
Just like Ronaldo is known as a hard worker, Messi is considered a genius by most people. Hence it is expected that Messi’s voters consider on-ball ability more than Ronaldo’s.
One leads to another, Messi’s voters also rate performances on the pitch more than Ronaldo’s.
In general, people who rate Messi higher tend to consider on-pitch actions more importantly; while the ones who rate Ronaldo higher value outside factors like how he is perceived by the public more.
Why? Relevance of statistics — Messi vs. Ronaldo
The correlation between Goals & Assists and the Messi vs. Ronaldo debate is the lowest one, mainly because I added the assist condition. However, there still exists a link between the importance of goal contributions and people who rate Ronaldo higher.
Cristiano Ronaldo has scored the most goals in football history, according to IFFHS (816). He also has the most goal contributions in Champions League history (141 goals and 41 assists). Those G/A records are impressive, leading most of Ronaldo’s voters to give more importance to goal contributions.
However, Ronaldo’s voters don’t like all types of statistics. Messi’s voters are way more favorable to the use of advanced data, it is the second most significant correlation. The main reason is that Mess is a player who racks up impressive possession statistics: xA, xT, progressive actions, etc. While Ronaldo does not so much as he operates higher up the pitch.
Life opinions
So far, we’ve only looked at basic football correlations. We will now go even further by finding potential causes of such football logic. Despite very few people mentioning the topic, opinions on life aspects have a non-negligible impact on football logic, hence opinions. Someone who considers themselves religious won’t see the game the same way as an atheist.
Political ideology
Survey results
To have an idea about the political opinions of the people taking my survey, I asked the following question: What is your political ideology? The possible answers were: Far Left, Left Wing, Center-Left, Center-Right, Right Wing, and Far Right. As you may notice, there is no middle option in an objective to force a decision.
Here are the results of the survey:
To create an average score, I will attribute the “1” value to “Far Left”, ascending to “6” for “Far Right”. The average score of the poll turns out to be 3.17.
Correlations — Political ideology
Legacy logic — Political ideology
About the importance of legacy put in relation to political ideology, the average legacy score for the people who feel more represented by left political ideas is 3.41, whilst it is 3.77 for the ones who agree more with the right-sided conceptions.
We can see that, just like trophy logic, the more right-sided someone is, the more likely he is to consider legacy highly when rating players.
When taking off the centrists, 68% of the Right Wing and Far Right voters consider legacy necessary when rating footballers (“4”, “5”, and “6” answers), while only 43% of the Left Wing and Far Left voters think so.
Trophy logic — Political ideology
Among the people who consider themselves leftists (Center-Left, Left Wing, and Far Left), the average score for the importance of trophies is 2.97. Although for the people who feel more represented by right-sided ideologies (Center-Right, Right Wing and Far Right), the average score is slightly higher, at 3.22.
Those results imply that, from the sample in question, the more right-sided someone is, the more likely he is to consider trophies highly when rating players.
The political ideology correlation is even higher when taking off the people who consider themselves centrists and only looking at the convinced Left and Right wing votes. 58% of the “pure” right-sided people consider trophies important (answers with “4”, “5”, and “6” scores), but only 30% of the “pure” leftist ones do.
Messi vs. Ronaldo — Political ideology
When drawing links between political ideologies and the Messi vs. Ronaldo debate, we can notice certain tendencies. The average political score of Messi’s voters is 3.09, whilst it is 3.63 for Ronaldo’s voters, showing that people who rate Messi as the best player of our generation tend to agree more with the leftist ideas. In contrast, Ronaldo’s voters feel more identified with the rightist ideologies.
In 2016, La Liga Blog conducted a similar study where 257 fans from the UK were asked about their opinion on the Messi vs. Ronaldo debate and their political ideologies.
They found even more extreme results; as of the 147 fans who preferred Ronaldo, 118 of them identified themselves as “right-wing” while of the 110 who picked Messi, 79 had a political compass that leaned to the left. Meaning that 80% of Ronaldo’s voters felt more attached to the right side of the political compass and 72% of Messi’s voters agreed more with the left side.
Others — Political ideology
There were barely any correlations with statistics, even though it still showed the expected results. Right-sided people slightly preferred the Goals + Assists formula over leftists (3.77 vs. 3.67). Conversely, people who agreed more with left-sided ideas considered advanced statistics more important than conservatives (4.24 vs. 4.08).
The correlation with the performance factor also showed low compatibility but still an interesting one nonetheless, the average “performances score” for leftists is 4.38 while it is 4.23 for the voters who feel more represented by the right side of the political compass, implying that they consider pure performances less importantly than leftists. However, the correlation for the ability factor was completely inexistent, with both political sides obtaining an average score of 3.41 (left-sided people barely higher with 3.412 vs. 3.405 for rightists).
As the elements presented above barely created any link of correlation, they won’t be seriously considered in the final conclusion, especially the ability factor regarding political ideology.
Why? — Political ideology
The main correlations regarding political ideologies were about the importance of trophies and legacy when rating footballers.
Why? Trophy & Legacy logic — Political ideology
The American Dream is the belief that anyone, regardless of where they were born or what class they were born into, can attain their own version of success in a society where upward mobility is possible for everyone. This term is a key conservative principle.
Success through hard work is one of the main values of right-sided people politically. Hence, there is little to no doubt that inspiring legacy stories leading to glory (trophies) will get considered highly by rightists.
Why? Messi vs. Ronaldo — Political ideology
Factors unrelated to football should be considered when explaining why right-sided people prefer Ronaldo while leftists rate Messi higher.
To do so, we need to take a look at the political side of the two main cities concerning the players in question, Madrid and Barcelona. The Spanish capital is historically considered a “Right-sided” city with the influence of Franco in the 20th century. On the other side, Barcelona, proud of its identity and Catalan language, has been much closer to the political left side. This difference is still apparent in the 2019 elections, where 43% of Madrid inhabitants voted for one of the two main right-sided parties, People’s Party and Vox. On the contrary, only 14% of Catalonian inhabitants did so, favoring the Republican Left of Catalonia–Sovereigntists coalition instead (23%), an independent movement lining to the left.
Religion
Survey results
To paint an accurate representation of religion among the sample of 2,000 voters, I asked the question: “Are you religious ?” with the usual “Yes” or “No” options, but I also added the “Uncertain” option to properly separate religious people from atheists without taking the doubters into accounts.
Here are the results of the survey:
In an objective to find the most precise results, the “uncertain” people will be ignored to only judge the convinced religious and atheist people.
Correlations — Religion
Trophy Logic — Religion
Among religious people, the average score for the importance of trophies when rating players is 3.29, while it is only 2.88 for atheists.
Those results imply that religious people consider trophies more significantly than atheists when rating players.
Legacy Logic — Religion
There are also correlations between religiosity and the importance of legacy when rating footballers. Religious people voted on average for a score of 3.77 regarding the matter of legacy, while the votes of atheist people concluded with a lower average of 3.34
We can see that religious people tend to rate the use of legacy when rating players as their 3.77 score is above the middle ground of 3.50, while atheists rather use other methods, as shown by their average legacy score of 3.34, below the middle.
Messi vs. Ronaldo — Religion
Going back to our first comparison, Messi vs. Ronaldo, links can be found regarding religiosity. 63% of Ronaldo’s voters claimed to be religious, while only 43.5% of Messi’s voters are. On the other side, 56.5% of people who rate Messi as the best player of our generation consider themselves atheists but only 37% of them ones preferring Ronaldo do.
Those results show that people who rate Ronaldo as the best player of our generation tend to be more religious than the ones who rank Messi higher.
Political ideology — Religion
There are also relations between different life opinions. Religions and Politics are and have always highly been related to each other:
As seen in the graphic above, Conservatives (right-sided party) are way more likely to consider religion very importantly (70%), whilst Liberals (leftist party) are way more likely to not put much importance on religion, with only 36% of them considering it very important.
Others — Religion
The rest of the factors barely found any correlation linked with religion.
Religious people slightly consider Goals and Assists higher than atheists (3.79 average scores vs. 3.64). Conversely, atheists rate overall statistics higher than religious people (4.26 vs. 4.08). Even though those results don’t show much difference, it is still noticeable and makes complete sense of what was expected.
Regarding the importance of performances when rating footballers, atheists rate it more importantly than religious people (4.40 vs. 4.21). On the other hand, people with religious faith consider on-ball ability slightly more important than non-believers (3.44 vs. 3.36).
Why? — Religion
The main correlations regarding religion were about the importance of trophies and legacies.
Why? Legacy & Trophy logic — Religion
The most logical correlation is between religion and legacy, as religions are often constructed on stories showing the glory of important religious people. The example of the Gospel informs us about Jesus’ heroic acts until his death.
Religious people might be more affected by storylines as they're exposed to more mythical stories, in contrary to atheists. Hence, footballers with inspirational career paths and many iconic moments leading to glory tend to be rated more highly by religious people.
“Sacred stories and religious texts play a central role in religion, yet there is a paucity of research investigating the relationship between religiosity and individual differences in how people engage with stories. […]Here, we examine the relationship between religiosity, as well as a belief in God, and […] a tendency to form relationships with the characters in stories (parasociability).”
— Jessica E. Black, et al. “Tell Me a Story: Religion, Imagination, and Narrative Involvement” in Journal for the Cognitive Science of Religion
As mentioned in the citation above, identification to heroes, footballers in this case, are the main effect of
Why? Messi vs. Ronaldo — Religion
Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo are both Catholic Christians, so they could both influence their fans’ religiosity. No primary direct off-football reason could explain why more of Ronaldo’s voters are religious. However, you could consider Cristiano’s donations and support sent to Syria. As 87% of Syria’s population is Muslim (CIA), you could assume that Ronaldo gained a lot of respect from this community.
Why? Political ideology — Religion
There is a high correlation link between left-sided people politically wise being atheists whilst rightists being religious. This could be explained because of the fact that religions themselves possess rules in their basis. Many left-sided policies, like the right to full abortion, for example, are against the organization of certain religions like Christianity or Islam. Interpretations vary for each religion, but generally, it is rarely encouraged within the communities.
“Considerable variation in religious edicts exists, but most Islamic scholars agree that the termination of a pregnancy for foetal anomalies is allowed before ensoulment, after which abortion becomes totally forbidden, even in the presence of foetal abnormalities.”
— Abdulrahman Al-Matary & Jaffar Ali in BMC Medical Ethics: “Controversies and considerations regarding the termination of pregnancy for Foetal Anomalies in Islam”
I also asked a question about abortion on my survey, asking people to give a score from 1 to 6 going from wether abortion should be completely illegal no matter what to if abortion should be allowed at any stage in pregnancy, the results are as following: 79.6% of atheists think that abortion should be allowed at almost any stage in pregnancy (5 & 6 answers) while only 36.8% of religious people think so.
Is religion really a choice?
Even though I included religion among life opinions, it is close to being a pre-acquired factor, and I could’ve almost put it in life conditions instead. Even though there are cases of people with religious parents becoming atheists and vice-versa, most people keep the same opinions regarding religion as their parents.
A study by Pew Research Center in 2019 found that over 80% of US teens from their sample (2,905) with two Catholic or Evangelical Protestant parents follow the same religion as them, and at least 85% of them are still religious but not necessarily Christians. About Mainline Protestants, although only 55% of them kept the same religion as their parents, 76% are still affiliated with religion as of the study’s date. The difference is even more significant for people with atheist parents, as 86% of those kept the same views as their mothers and fathers.
Some could say that it is the same about political ideologies, but I found quite different results; only 47.6% of the 2,000 people answering my survey claimed to hold similar political beliefs as their parents.
Religious beliefs remain a choice in the end, but knowing this will help in the final conclusion.
Conspirationism
Survey results
Conspirationism is the most complex factor to evaluate as it possesses a negative connotation nowadays. To call a theory “a conspiracy theory” is to imply that it is false and that the people who believe it or who would like to investigate it (i.e., conspiracy theorists) are irrational. For example, people with highly unpopular theories, such as the idea that the earth is flat, might not even consider themselves conspiracy theorists due to the lack of public credibility that comes with the term.
Nevertheless, the correlations still appeared as expected and will be helpful to draw a final conclusion; keep in mind that the results could potentially be even higher if the respondents took this survey in a sincere way.
Here are the results of the survey:
Disclaimer: The data shown in the following section will consider a smaller sample size than usual due to only 276 people identifying themselves as conspiracy theorists.
Correlations — Conspirationism
Relevance of statistics — Conspirationism
Whilst there’s no correlation between the importance of G/A and conspiracy theorists (3.70 average scores for conspiracists vs. 3.71 for non-conspiracists). There is a way stronger one regarding the use of overall statistics like xG, xA, and xT but also including goals and assists. As a reminder, the stronger the score is, the more important the factor in question (overall statistics) is vital for the sample in question.
The average overall statistics score for the people who consider themselves conspiracy theorists is 3.89. On the other side, for the rest of the people who don’t consider themselves conspiracy theorists, the average score for the importance of overall statistics is 4.23.
Those results show that people who consider themselves conspiracy theorists value statistics of all sorts lower than the rest of the sample.
Trophy Logic — Conspirationism
Among the conspiracists, the average score regarding the importance of trophies is 3.27. On the other hand, the rest of the sample finds an average score of 3.03 when judging the relevancy of trophies in the rating process of players.
We can see that conspiracy theorists tend to value trophies more than non-conspiracists.
Messi vs. Ronaldo — Conspirationism
Returning to the original debate, 25.6% of people who rate Ronaldo as the best player of our generation consider themselves conspiracy theorists, while only 11.8% of Messi’s voters do.
We can conclude that, although the share of people considering themselves conspiracy theorists is relatively low, they are more present among the people who rate Cristiano as the best player of the 21st century, proportionally.
Others — Conspirationism
Conspiracist people also rate the importance of legacy higher than the rest (3.75 vs. 3.51); I didn’t include it in the main ones as it is simply in accordance with trophies, which makes more sense when explaining the reason of conspiracy theorists.
There is also a small correlation between conspiracists and the importance of pure performances, as they consider them less important than non-conspiracist people (4.11 vs. 4.36). However, there is barely any link with on-ball ability level, as conspiracy theorists rate it slightly above the rest (3.50 vs. 3.40).
Why? — Conspirationism
The main correlations regarding conspiration are the relevance of statistics and trophy logic.
Why? Relevance of statistics — Conspirationism
It is pretty logical to explain why conspiracists don’t tend to consider football statistics meaningful when rating footballers. The main motive of conspiracy theories is to be against the groups of power and to find lapses in the system everyone believes in. Football statistics happen to play that role in the survey.
Conspiracy theory : The belief that a secret but powerful organization is responsible for an event
— Oxford English Dictionary
Why? Trophy logic — Conspirationism
As conspiracy theorists don’t find statistics (even the most basic ones) or performances much relevant when rating footballers compared to the others, there is one solution left, trophies.
Accompanied by legacy logic, trophies don’t possess any direct link with the original thought process of conspiracy theorists; it is just the only and simplest football logic to use left.
Life conditions
After analyzing how life opinions can impact how one sees football, how about we go even further and try to find what impacts those life opinions in the first place? How factors like family wealth or cultural education can indirectly influence how some people see the Messi vs. Ronaldo debate at the end of the chain.
This part of the survey might be sensible as the data analyzed here, especially ethnicity, are subject to discrimination in our society. However, here we will explain why some factors like ethnicity and family wealth have an impact on life and football opinions, not directly because of it, but because of the cultural aspects and education that come with it.
A caucasian man won’t have different views than a Latino one because of his origins and skin color, but because of the cultural differences that generally (not always) come with it, which are commonly accepted in our world. It is crucial not to fall into the simplistic analysis.
Ethnicity
Survey results
“Separating” the different ethnicities of our world was an arduous task. On one side, I wanted to have as many options as possible, not to generalize people of vastly different cultures in the same category. Unfortunately, I was forced to reduce the number of options to make the results simpler to analyze.
I then asked: Which of the following best represents your ethnical heritage? The options were: Non-Hispanic White (Caucasian); Hispanic, Lusitanic or Latino; Kurdish/Central Asian; Black, Afro-Caribbean, or African American; Arab (North African & Middle East); South Asian; East or Southeast Asian; Native (American or Oceanian).
For the people with mixed origins or that didn’t feel any attachment to one of those options, I still asked them to pick the one they felt the closest to.
Here are the results:
*Natives won’t be counted in the results as only 10 of them took my survey, and it is impossible to draw a conclusion from such a low sample size.
Correlations — Ethnicity
Ethnicity — Religion
Research projects about the correlations between religiosity and different parts of the world have already been done with a more professional approach than my study.
This study by the Pew Research Center depicts the levels of religious commitments worldwide. By asking the question “Is religion important to you?” to adults from all around the world, 54% responded “Yes”.
However, levels of religious commitment vary widely around the world. In Western countries such as France, Germany, and the United Kingdom, the percentage of adults who consider religion important to them is meager (11%, 10%, and 10%, respectively). On the other hand, South Asians and African countries such as India, Pakistan, and Nigeria consider religion way more importantly (80%, 94%, and 88%, respectively).
Coming back to my study, it found similar results, albeit some differences due to the question being about ethnicity and not country and the fact that I just asked about religiosity and not if it had an important place in the respondents’ life.
83% of Arabs who filled out my survey are religious, and the number also remains very high for black people, with 75%. On the other hand, only 21% of non-Hispanic white people identify as religious. The main difference from the Pew Research Center is regarding South Asians, where only 57% of those who took my survey are religious, while the Pew Research Center found that over 80% of South Asian inhabitants consider religion as very important in their life.
Ethnicity — Political ideology
Even though it was easy to find other studies comparing religion and ethnicity, it is harder to find a proper research about the political opinion of people across the world. Simply using the ideology of the parties in charge isn’t enough to represent the opinion of the population, considering that some leaders might identify as an ideology that they do not practice in reality and that some country leaders aren’t elected democratically, which again doesn’t represent the political ideology of its inhabitants.
Here are the different ethnicities selected ranked by how much percent of their voters consider themselves as right-sided politically wise (Center-Right, Right Wing and Far Right voters)
Arab (North African & Middle East): 56.7%
Kurdish/Central Asian: 56.7%
East or Southeast Asian: 40.5%
Black or African American: 39.5%
South Asian: 37%
Hispanic, Lusitanic, or Latino: 36.6%
Non-Hispanic White (Caucasian): 28.6%
From this data, we can observe that only Arabs and Kurdish people are more rightists than leftists. From then, all the ethnicities from 3rd to 6th spot are around the 36-40% rate, while Non-Hispanic White people (Caucasians) are way below, with only 28.6% of them identifying as right-sided politically wise.
Ethnicity — Messi vs. Ronaldo
To see which ethnicities favor Ronaldo or Messi the most, I compared the two different fanbases by seeing which ethnicities represented them the most:
As seen in the graphic above, the ethnicities with a bigger proportion of people who consider Messi as the best player of our generation are (difference % in parenthesis): Non-Hispanic White people (+35%); Hispanics, Lusitanics, or Latinos (+35%); and South Asians (+15%).
Among the people who rate Ronaldo over Messi, the ethnicities that stand out are Arabs (+93%), Kurdish/Central Asian people (+89%), Black Africans/Americans (+23%), and East/Southeast Asians (+21%).
Why? — Ethnicity
Why? Religion — Ethnicity
There are many theories to explain why certain countries almost possess a 100% religiosity rate while others barely have above 10%.
First of all, the places where the main religions started are currently among the main religious regions. Christianity, Judaism, and Islam all started in the Middle East, while Hinduism and Buddhism began in Southern Asia. Both regions are currently among the top 3 most practicing religions.
Another reason, which is more of a theory, is that religions first arose as solutions to cooperation problems to facilitate the formation of societies. With this theory, the invention of formal policing institutions reduced the need for God as a policing institution, thus reducing the importance of religion in concerned regions such as Western Europe. This theory comes from the book Big Gods: How Religion Transformed Cooperation and Conflict by Ara Norenzayan (2013).
In the end, no matter which theory is true or not, it is certain that ethnicity has an enormous impact on religion, the biggest of each factor presented in this article. Someone born in Pakistan or Ethiopia won’t even consider the possibility of being an atheist (or very rarely); on the other side, a person from Finland or Sweden is much more likely to be an atheist than not (see “The Age Gap in Religion Around the World” by Pew Research Center). Hence, the country of birth, related to cultural aspects, has a non-negligible control over the “choice” of religion.
Why? Political ideology — Ethnicity
Ethnicity-wise, it is almost impossible to separate religion from politics. For example, Arabs and Non-Hispanic White people are opposites on both questions. White people are the least religious and the most left-sided politically, while Arabs are the most religious and right-sided politically.
Values of right-sided parties are similar to religious ones, such as conservatism. While the left-sided parties, less religious, make opposition through progressivism.
There can also be some individual cases that make a certain region more left or right-sided politically that aren’t directly related to religion. Still, those can’t serve as general explanations.
Like religions, someone born in Western Europe is more likely to lean to the left politically wise than someone born in North Africa.
Why? Messi vs. Ronaldo — Ethnicity
Getting back to the original Messi vs. Ronaldo debate, even though the two factors presented above have an impact on this question, as shown in the preceding section, other factors significantly influence this debate.
For the ethnicities with football culture, such as Caucasians and Hispanics/Lusitanics/Latinos that both prefer Messi, there aren’t many external factors that haven’t been treated already, apart from the country origins of the players in question. Even though both Ronaldo and Messi fall into the Hispanic/Lusitanic/Latino section, Lionel Messi is way more worshipped in the entire continent of South America (except Brazil), while Portugal is a smaller country with a reduced influence Europe-wise.
However, for the regions of the world that aren’t related to Messi or Ronaldo and weren’t necessarily involved in football until recently, other factors, such as TV rights, come into account. FIFA started broadcasting World Cup matches in India at the 1986 edition by DD Sports, where Maradona had an iconic campaign carrying Argentina to the title. Indian football fans’ love for Argentina continued until today, as another legend is venerated, Lionel Messi.
The biggest correlation between the survey regarding ethnicity and the Messi vs. Ronaldo debate remains about Arabs (North Africa & Middle East) and the preference for Cristiano. Even though religious and political aspects significantly impact this pick, other factors also come into account. Throughout his career, Ronaldo has frequently shown support to the inhabitants of Gaza in Palestine, especially the children. This gesture was greatly appreciated in the Arabic and Muslim world, where the tensions between Israel and Palestine are a huge talking point.
Hence, South Asian fans, especially Indians, are more inclined to pick Lionel Messi as their favorite player over Ronaldo due to the historical preference for Argentinian players in the region. On the other side, North African and Middle Easter people tend to favor Cristiano over Messi more often.
Family wealth
Survey results
To see the wealth of the people filling the survey, I asked the following question: How wealthy was your family during your childhood? With five different possible answers: Poor, Lower class, Middle class, Upper class, and Rich.
Here are the results:
Correlations — Family wealth
Family wealth — Religion
Many organizations have examined correlations between wealth and religiosity in the past few years at a more professional level than my survey.
This study by the Pew Research Center shows a direct correlation between the percentage of adults who pray daily and the average per capita gross domestic product (adjusted for purchasing power parity) out of 102 countries examined.
From those results, we can conclude that the richest a country is, the least likely it is to hold an important place in religion.
My survey again found similar results, but with an interesting twist:
As you can see from the graph above, the percentage of religiosity decreases more and more depending on wealth. Although, as we get to the “rich” section, the rate of religious people suddenly goes up.
Family wealth — Political ideology
Different studies have found correlations between wealth and political ideology, unfortunately only at a national scale. In the 2012 United States presidential election, poor people leaned to the Democratic party of Obama while the richest they were getting, the more likely they were to vote for the Republican party of Romney (PayScale); Obama’s party was considered more left-leaned than Romney’s who had a right-sided program.
However, this study only considers the United States. When looking at my survey, which had a worldwide range, there is an important difference regarding the people regarding their family as “poor”:
Even though the correlation from the Lower class to the Rich is the same as the US survey presented above, a major part of the poor class agrees more with rightist ideas.
Family wealth — Messi vs. Ronaldo
Back to the Messi vs. Ronaldo debate, here are the differences between the two groups of supporters based on the wealth of their family:
As seen in the visualization above, poor and rich people tend to favor Ronaldo, while the middle class and its surroundings tend to favor Messi.
Why? — Family wealth
Why? Religion — Family wealth
Religion comes with values that can shape financial outcomes much more than the opposite. According to Lisa Keister in How Religion Contributes To Wealth And Poverty, the main factors are education, marriage, number of kids, and women’s decision to stay home with their kids.
For example, Jews are an exception to the other principal religions of the world, with more similarities with atheists on the factors presented before, showing why there may be wealth differences between religious groups:
“Conservative Protestants often favor large families and a traditional gender division of labor in which women do not work out of the home. Conservative Protestants have also had, on average, lower levels of education than other groups.”
“At the opposite end are Jewish families. Many Jewish mothers also stay home with their children for at least the first years of the child's life. But Jewish mothers are more likely to have high levels of education and a relatively small number of children.”
— Lisa Keister “Religion and Stratification”
However, I found a slight difference from the normal trend in my study, as the people considering their family as “rich” are more religious than the Upper and Middle class. The reason for this change could be that highly wealthy people will try to find purpose in a world where they already possess almost every material benefit; hence, some may find their answers in religion.
Religion and wealth can both be influenced by each other.
Why? Political ideology — Family wealth
To explain the general trend that the wealthiest people are more likely to vote for the rightist parties, we have to look into the main ideas promulgated by the two sides. Left-sided parties want to increase taxes on the rich, raise the minimum salary, and reduce student debt. On the other side, rightist parties generally want to reduce taxes on the rich and reduce business regulations.
It makes complete sense that as a rich person, you would vote for the party that will charge you the least taxes, while the poorer people would prefer their minimum wages to be increased. There are also social reasons like healthcare, but financial reasons are the main factors or relation between wealth and political ideology.
However, my study found that poor people are more right-sided than anyone else. As seen earlier, Caucasians are the most left-sided ethnicity from the ones presented; they also tend to be the richest, especially in the western world. Hence, people from all around the world, especially Sub-Saharan Africans, North Africans, and Middle Easterns, tend to be poorer and right-leaned politically, which goes against the US trend.
Why? Messi vs. Ronaldo — Family wealth
Both Messi and Ronaldo grew up in modest families, but Ronaldo’s situation was even poorer. Hence, people who grew up in low-income families might identify more with Ronaldo and see him as a life model to encourage them to surpass their social status.
From then on, the richer the families of the people taking my survey are, the more likely they are to support Messi, detaching themselves from the success story of Ronaldo until we get to the 1.6% most prosperous people, as those tend to favor Cristiano more.
Summary
Correlation mind maps
After analyzing multiple correlations, it’s time to put them together to see all the factors impacting the opinions of someone.
Before reading the following mind map, it’s important to know that those are the potential factors leading to believing that one of Messi or Ronaldo is better than the other. It is not necessary to agree with any of the elements presented below to have an opinion on the famous debate; the factors just tend to be found more on one side of the spectrum than the other. For example, not all religious people agree with rightists ideas, but more of them do than atheists. It is not a generalization.
On the following mind maps, dark green represents the life conditions, normal green represents life opinions, and the light green represents football opinions. The full black lines mean that the correlations are strong with enough validity. The dotted lines indicate that the relations aren’t confirmed either because of a lack of sample or a big enough correlation. Green lines represent correlations between factors of the same category.
The explanations in the middle of the lines are not necessarily proven, they are just theories. However, the results of the following graphics are confirmed by my study and/or others.
Ronaldo > Messi
Here are the factors which are the most frequent with people rating Ronaldo over Messi:
Messi > Ronaldo
Here are the factors which are the most frequent with people rating Messi over Ronaldo:
It’s all in the culture
These factors are related to people preferring Messi or Ronaldo in some way, simply because the player in question is more relatable based on cultural aspects and personal beliefs.
Someone born in Saudi Arabia isn’t more likely to rate Ronaldo over Messi than someone born in Sweden just because of his nationality or ethnicity at plain value. People aren’t born into this world with specific beliefs, they are taught certain aspects by their parents, who can model their child around them, or the child in question can also learn by himself based on experiences.
Suppose I was presented with a thousand 20 years old football fans. In that case, half of them being from Saudi Arabia and the other half from Sweden, I would surely be able to guess which sample has the most people favoring Lionel Messi. I would pick the Swede due to many factors, such as religiosity, political ideology, and knowing that Caucasians tend to rate Messi higher. However, if you presented me the same sample but 20 years before, at the time of their birthday (hypothetically) it would probably be even considering that none of them would have been influenced by any factor. Everyone is born the similarly (opinion-wise); culture, education, and personal experiences are what forge thought.
However, it is still possible for a Far-Right voter, Protestant, who believes in many conspiracy theories to think that Messi is the best player of our generation. Why? Because of…
The Randomness factor
Your first football memory, your first jersey, a team that you picked in a video game, etc. Many random events can affect how some people see football as those impact which teams and players they will support, especially if they don’t live in a big football country. However, unlike the others, this factor isn’t measurable; as its name suggests, it is random.
People who start their football fanatic journey in a completely random way with life conditions opposite to their football choices will find their logic oppositely. For example, Ronaldo supporters will start considering factors such as legacy and goals highly to make their favorite player look the best as possible. On the other side, people who became Messi fans for no background reason will start considering aspects such as on-ball ability higher all of a sudden.
The randomness factor is the biggest of them all, regardless of your family background or life opinions. For example, if Messi’s UCL final goal in 2011 is your first football memory and it impacted you, there’s a high chance you’ll start supporting Messi and Barcelona later.
Determinism vs. Free-Will
After analyzing many factors impacting how people see life, hence football, a question arises: How much control do people have over their thoughts?
External factors like those presented before impact all football fans. It is impossible to completely detach ourselves from the outer world (commentators, parents, social media, culture, etc.).
However, this doesn’t mean that we are entirely programmed to think and act a certain way based on our background. Everyone can separate themselves from pre-acquired thoughts at a certain level. It is a difficult task as it implies the challenge of your personal beliefs that you may have had since you were a child. Strong minds will be able to detach themselves from everything they learned to a certain point and judge things from an external viewpoint. Unfortunately, most people don’t possess this mindset.
To explain with a football example, it would be like asking Messi’s and Ronaldo's die-hard supporters to start using evidence to find the actual truth in rating a footballer and not going by the opposite way of approving every single bit of evidence that could prove their pre-acquired opinions. Taking the recent example of Ronaldo’s interview with Piers Morgan, Messi’s die-hard supporters will listen to it and try to find every single piece of information to make Ronaldo look as bad as possible. Conversely, Ronaldo’s intense fans will do their best to find every clip making their favorite player look as right as possible.
This way of judging things is completely dishonest. Look for evidence to form an opinion, not the opposite.
“Freethinkers are those who are willing to use their minds without prejudice and without fearing to understand things that clash with their own customs, privileges, or beliefs. This state of mind is not common, but it is essential for right thinking.”
— Leo Tolstoy
Think for yourself
So so interesting to actually see the results first hand. Personally being someone who identifies as a leftist and a Messi fan, I was surprised to see how the bias plays even across ideology.
Good work Gaspard!
Huge respect to Gasipo for the research