The Drum Awards for Marketing - Extended Deadline

-d -h -min -sec

Twitter

Phil Neville outflanks Barack Obama on Twitter

Author

By The Drum Team, Editorial

November 4, 2010 | 2 min read

Everton defender Phil Neville is more popular than Barack Obama... on Twitter at least.

Last night the 33-year-old footballer became a worldwide trending topic, tweeted about more times than the beleaguered American president.

Neville became an unlikely internet phenomenon on the back of Gareth Bale's man of the match performance for Tottenham against Inter Milan.

As Spurs fans took to the social networking site to praise their star's display, Everton supporters retorted that Neville had managed to outplay Bale when the two went head to head last week.

And from there, the Neville effect snowballed, leaving many users around the world bemused.

What started off as praise for Neville's full-back displays soon turned downright odd.

"The Queen sings God Save Phil Neville" tweeted EFC_Tanuki, while Najeem66 said: "Some people say magicians could walk on water, but Phil Neville could swim through land."

Many of the tweets, however, were simply asking "who is Phil Neville?" His American former team-mate Landon Donovan summed up the mood: "Phil Neville is trending?!? What has this world come to?!?!?!?"

Twitter

More from Twitter

View all

Trending

Industry insights

View all
Add your own content +