Philippe Coutinho is 2017’s Most-Searched Footballer

If you asked someone who 2017’s most-searched footballer would have been, most would probably guess the usual suspects, Leo Messi or Cristiano Ronaldo. It turns out, though, that Liverpool’s Philippe Coutinho was the football player people looked for more than any other on Google.

Thanks to last summer’s train-wreck transfer saga, with Barcelona feeding a constant string of updates to the Catalan press about a done deal and then the player handing in a transfer request and then Liverpool then digging in their heels refusing to be cowed into a sale, Coutinho came out on top.

Being the most-searched footballer, though, was only good for tenth on Google’s list, while also making him the second most-searched athlete, as Coutinho finished after boxer Floyd Mayweather—who came in eighth overall on the strength of people’s interest in his bout with Conor McGregor.

The list was dominated this year—in what will probably come as a surprise to nobody—by scandal. Disgraced former NBC personality Matt Lauer topped the list, with fellow alleged sexual abusers and horrible people Harvey Weinstein and Kevin Spacey also finding a place in 2017’s top five.

Also making the top five was Nadia Toffa, an Italian journalist who produced report about a supposed nuclear experiment that was dismissed as meritless and mocked in her country, and—the lone non-scandal inclusion up near the top—future British royal and tabloid obsession Meghan Markle.

Between them all and Coutinho there was room for Wonder Woman actress Gal Gadot, first lady Melania Trump—but not, in what one imagines will be a blow to him, her husband—and former American national security advisor Michael Flynn.