[New Research] Messi Beats Ronaldo in 2026 World Cup Password Breach Data Rankings

The 2026 FIFA World Cup is just weeks away, set to dominate screens throughout the summer. For one nation, the ultimate glory awaits. For football legends Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo, it could mark a final chapter in one of the most enduring sports rivalries of all time.

At Specops, we’ve made our own contribution to the Messi vs Ronaldo debate, but we’re not looking at goals and trophies; we’re looking at which name shows up more often in compromised passwords.

Drawing on more than 6.4 billion breached passwords, Messi won by a clear margin, appearing over 1.2 million times, against Ronaldo who appeared roughly 923,000 times, a difference of around 26%.

Staying with the football theme, our research team set out to explore the extent to which “The Beautiful Game” influences our password decisions. To do this, we analyzed data from recent Alien Txtbase infostealer dumps to identify which football-related terms appear most often in real-world compromised passwords.

Our previous World Cup research ranked football legends, qualifying nations, and game-related terms appearing in breached password lists. This year’s analysis revisits that ground with fresh data to see what’s changed.

The release of this new analysis also coincides with the addition of 300 million newly compromised passwords to the Specops Breached Password Protection service, sourced from our honeypot network and threat intelligence feeds.

The players making the starting lineup… in breached passwords

2026 Player Rankings – Breached Password Data Edition

Player name	Occurrences
Messi	1,221,563
Vinicius	1,198,898
Salah	1,123,062
Saka	1,019,325
Kane	987,335
Ronaldo	923,582
Fernandes	804,159
Gavi	683,831
Isak	682,702
Pedri	394,639

The starting lineup, from Messi at number one through to Ronaldo at six, reveals a generational shift in the data. Five of the top ten (Vinicius, Saka, Gavi, Isak, and Pedri) are players who’ve broken through in the last few years, while Salah and Kane represent the established stars.

This mix of older and younger stars suggests password choices aren’t just legacy habits and that fans are building new credentials around the players they’re watching now.

Widely supported clubs appearing in infostealer data

The 2026 Breached Password League Table

Team	Occurrences
Roma	5,340,687
Porto	517,505
Barcelona	474,842
Lyon	427,824
Valencia	427,480
Napoli	363,189
Chelsea	362,311
Everton	351,011
PSG	331,641
Arsenal	311,740

Roma tops the table with 5.3 million occurrences, an order of magnitude clear of the chasing pack, though that lead almost certainly owes more to the city of Rome than to AS Roma fans.

Honorable mentions go to Liverpool, pipped to a top 10 spot by Merseyside rivals Everton with more than 90,000 fewer occurrences: a rare derby win for the blue half of the city.

Why people build passwords around football

People need to keep track of ever-growing lists of passwords, so it’s no wonder they try to make them as memorable as possible.

That usually means drawing from things that are easy to recall without effort, and football fits that perfectly. A favorite player, a club you’ve supported for years or a historic win are all instantly accessible and unlikely to be forgotten.

The same qualities that make these passwords easy to remember make them easy to attack. We can see that in the passwords people make.

The following are all real football-themed compromised passwords pulled from the Alien Txtbase dump:

• Cristianoronaldo7@@
• Cr7ronaldo@?
• zidaneisbetterthanmbappe1234
• lionelmessithebest10
• lionelmessithegoat10
• mrs_kylianmbappe
• kylianmbappeg04t

For someone who is a Ronaldo fan, the password “Cr7ronaldo@?” has the dual advantage of meeting common password security standards while still being memorable. However, if an attacker knows that the user is a Ronaldo fan, this password suddenly becomes fairly predictable, even if it hasn’t already been compromised.

Attackers don’t sit there typing passwords by hand. They run wordlists through tools like Hashcat or John the Ripper and apply rule-based mutations: appending years, swapping “o” for “0”, and adding “!” or “@” to the end.

Once a popular term lands in a wordlist, every plausible variation comes for free. A password like “Messi2022!” is generated as part of a broader rule chain applied to a high-probability base word. If a dataset shows a high frequency of patterns like [word][4-digit year][symbol], attackers can prioritize that format.

Breached datasets feed this loop. Every time “Cr7ronaldo” or a variant turns up in a leak, it gets prioritized more aggressively in the next round of attacks. Given how often users reuse or slightly modify passwords, a football-themed credential compromised in one context can quickly become an entry point elsewhere.

Defending against password attacks

The more context an attacker has, the more targeted and effective password spraying and cracking attempts become. To reduce this risk, organizations should consider measures such as:

• Enforcing a minimum password length of 15 characters, or providing support for longer passphrases.
• Requiring the use of multiple character classes: uppercase, lowercase, numbers, and special characters.
• Implementing a custom dictionary that blocks popular words and terms relevant to the organization.
• Using a breached password database to prevent users from selecting compromised password.

Find weak and compromised passwords in your network

This month’s update to the Breached Password Protection service also adds more than 4.6 million newly compromised passwords to the express dataset used by Specops Password Auditor, helping you identify risk more accurately.

With a read-only scan of Active Directory, Specops Password Auditor shows how many of your users are using compromised or reused passwords. You’ll also receive a complimentary, easy-to-understand report highlighting risks like weak policies, breached credentials, and stale or inactive accounts.

Move from point-in-time visibility to continuous protection

While Specops Password Auditor gives you an overview of your current risk, identity security isn’t static. Attackers continuously refine their tactics, and new passwords are added to breached databases all the time. Your defenses need to keep pace with this evolving threat landscape.

With Specops Password Policy and its Breached Password Protection feature, you can protect your Active Directory against more than 6.1 billion known compromised passwords. Our research team continuously updates the service using real-world attack data, including passwords sourced from breach datasets and infostealer activity.

Specops Breached Password Protection scans Active Directory on an ongoing basis, helping you identify and respond to compromised passwords as they emerge. You can also notify users with customizable messaging, reducing friction while improving password hygiene and limiting service desk impact.

If you’d like to see how this could work in your environment, contact us today, or book a demo to see our solutions in action.