As if winning the World Cup on Sunday wasn’t enough, Lionel Messi’s celebration post on Instagram has earned him yet another feather in his cap: a world record.
The Guinness Book of World Records announced on Tuesday that Messi’s Insta post is now the most liked post in the history of the platform, with over 62 million likes as of publication. It features photos of him celebrating Argentina’s win over France in Sunday’s World Cup final with his teammates, and also shows him doing various things with the solid gold trophy, like raising it over his head, cuddling it, and kissing it.
With 62 million likes and counting, the number of people who liked that post is greater than the populations of all but 23 countries in the world. If all those people came together and formed their own country (possibly named Messiland or Messitina), it would be larger than Italy, Thailand, Spain, South Korea, and Messi’s home country of Argentina.
To be the greatest, you have to beat the greatest. In this case, Messi’s post dethroned the famous egg photo as the most-liked post in Instagram history. That’s not a euphemism or a code — it’s an actual picture of an egg, published in 2019 specifically to set the record for most-liked post.
Yup. It’s just an egg. An egg that over 56 million people saw and liked. But now its reign as most-liked Instagram post in history has come to an end, and it’s Messi’s time. Thankfully, he’s much more interesting than an egg.
