Kaká: Brazil soccer star most popular athlete on Twitter, surpassing 10 million followers

SÃO PAULO, Brazil — Brazilian soccer star Kaká has become the post popular athlete on Twitter, surpassing 10 million followers.

After reaching the social media milestone, he decided to tweet about it, of course.

"We are already 10 million !!! Thank youuuuu. To celebrate I'll make a twitcam. Soon I'll send an update about the schedule. Tks !!" he wrote to his fans from @KAKA.

And Kaká — who had 10,021,377 followers when this was written — is among friends on Twitter, with three others in the top 5 most popular athletes playing his sport, according to MLS Soccer, including fellow Brazilian Neymar, who comes in at number four with 4,106,460 followers.

While Kaká, whose real name is Ricardo Izecson dos Santos Leite, remains well behind other celebrities like Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber — each with more than 20 million followers on the micro-blogging site — his haul is not too shabby for a player whose career with Real Madrid has fallen short of expectations after he signed with the Spanish team in 2009 for 65 million euros (then $92 million), according to The Score.

Kaká describes himself as a "Christian, husband and father who loves soccer." His image is squeaky clean, particularly in comparison to the celebrity-driven lifestyle of most of today's soccer players. Before accepting Real Madrid's offer in 2009, he turned down a move to Manchester City, where he would have earned a reported world-record salary of $800,000 a week, reported the Associated Press.

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