On the soccer field, Brazilian midfielder Kaká is a dominating force who has scored more than 150 goals in his professional career, won the 2002 FIFA World Cup, and has been called one of the best players in the world by soccer legend Pele.
Now Kaká can add top Twitter athlete to his list of accolades.
Sometime Tuesday Kaka (@kaka) surpassed 10 million followers on Twitter to earn the spot as the most popular sports celebrity in the world.
“The midfielder, who plays for Spain’s Real Madrid club team, was about 30,000 followers short of the milestone as of late Monday afternoon,” Mashable reported. “He added more than 35,000 followers in a single day twice during the past week, according to the stats site TwitterCounter.com.”
Kaká is now number 17 on Twitaholic’s list of users with the most followers. Close behind is Portuguese player Cristiano Ronaldo at number 20 with about nine million followers.
Considering that neither one of those two athletes are household names in the U.S., their Twitter stats highlight the global impact of the microblogging site and its popularity among soccer fans.