How Real Madrid and the Champions League make the most of Ronaldo magic on social media

April 4, 2018

Cristiano Ronaldo’s goal for Real Madrid against Juventus last night was stunning.

If you haven’t seen it yet: first of all where have you been? And secondly, there’s a clip in one of the tweets below.

Few players in the world – in truth, really only one other – can score a goal and become almost the only thing in the world that social media is talking about. And even then, it has to be one of the best goals you’ve ever seen.

Last night, Ronaldo did that with an overhead kick which seemed to epitomise everything he stands for. It was a show-stopping piece of individual brilliance, but more than that, it was athletic, powerful and precise: it was Ronaldo in a nutshell.

Faced with such a moment, both Real Madrid and the Champions League had social media in the palm of their hand. From the club’s point of view, their most famous player has done something special. As for the Champions League, he’s done it in their competition. And both were able to make the most of it.

On Instagram, both accounts were able to break the million likes barrier simply with an image of Ronaldo making contact with the ball. The Champions League account, with over 20m followers managed 1.1m likes, whilst Madrid, with over 56m followers counted 2.7m likes. Both are impressive figures by anyone’s standards, but both are also great percentage returns from their follower totals. And impressions will be even higher.

⚽ THE BEST: @Cristiano Ronaldo

A post shared by Real Madrid C.F. ???? (@realmadrid) on

As time wore on, the goal was the talk of the next day, too, and both accounts had more content to draw on.

It emerged that Juventus’s fans gave Ronaldo a standing ovation because of his strike. So good was it that the vanquished team couldn’t help but marvel at the feat of footballing brilliance before them. It was a classy act which Madrid were, themselves, classy enough to highlight on Twitter today – though it serves to highlight just how good the goal was, too.

Another way the club and league could keep the goal alive was with the press conferences they held after the game.

Juventus players were asked about it, as were the managers and Ronaldo himself. Everyone wanted to talk about it – and that includes journalists and officials at the game as well as fans following on Twitter.

The Champions League was able to take a quote from Juve defender Andrea Barzagli praising the goal as well as the post-match interview with Ronaldo. The club, too, had the man of the moment to call upon to give a short video clip which the club could post to its hundreds of millions of followers on social media.

And then there’s the manager.

Ronaldo isn’t the only world superstar player at Real Madrid, nor is he the only Ballon d’Or winner: his manager Zinedine Zidane was some player, too.

Indeed, Zidane won the Champions League with Real Madrid in 2002: the final of that year, at Hampden Park in Glasgow is remembered for Zidane’s wonder-volley which sealed victory.

Who’s goal was better? Zidane thinks it was his… but you wouldn’t know it by his reaction upon seeing Ronaldo score last night.

And all of that content was created simply in reference to the strike. Some of the posts were images of celebrations, others interviews with players and managers, but none actually showed a clip of the goal. It shows how clubs and leagues can keep the conversation alive and provide fans with reaction after a moment of brilliance without even needing to use much video from the game itself.

But then, there’s always room for a highlights clip, too:

About author

Chris McMullan
Chris McMullan 831 posts

Chris is a sports journalist and editor of Digital Sport - follow him on Twitter @CJMcMullan_

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