Is it time we stopped putting footballers on a pedestal, expecting them to be different than any other set of people?
The results of a YouGov survey to find the “most admired” people on Earth were published this week. Top of the men’s list is Barack Obama, the first black US president (in the world of most admired, the sexes are bashfully separated). In second is Bill Gates, donor of about $50bn to charity. But the real big mover is (of course) Cristiano Ronaldo, who ends 2021 breathing down the neck of genocidal party dictator Xi Jinping for the title of third most-admired man on the planet.
To a cynic this might look like strange company. Below Ronaldo on the global admiration list are activists, philanthropists, hyper-visible despots, fancy-hatted emissaries of God’s word on Earth.
