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Irish Mirror
Irish Mirror
Sport
Staff Reporter

Roy Keane beats David Beckham in sexiest retired footballers rankings as Italian tops list

Roy Keane has come in ahead of David Beckham in a list of the sexiest retired footballers.

Research carried out by Ticketgum placed the Cork man fifth on the list, one place ahead of his former Manchester United teammate.

Italian Daniele De Rossi tops the list ahead of another former United captain in Nemanja Vidic, who came second, with Roma legend Francesco Totti third and Wales' all-time leading goalscorer Gareth Bale, who announced his retirement from the sport earlier this year, fourth.

READ MORE: Roy Keane rages as Man Utd star reaches "height of stupidity" in FA Cup final defeat

To find out the hottest ex-players, the researchers looked at a range of attributes, including net worth, strength, Tweets about them and the golden ratio. Taking these factors into account, a sexiness score was given to each to determine which retired footballers are the sexiest of all-time.

De Rossi ranks as the hottest, with a final score of 8.57. He scored highly in the golden ratio percentage (84.85%), with Keane getting a score of 7.08 narrowly ahead of Beckham on 6.98.

On Keane, the researchers said: "Scoring 7.1 out of 10 is Roy Keane – one of the most successful Irish football players of all time. In our study, Keane’s strength (86), percentage match to the golden ratio (81.49%), and fortune of $60 million accumulated in a respectable score of 7.1, crowning him the fifth sexiest retired footballer of all time."

The rest of the top ten includes Pablo Zabaleta, Martin Skrtel, Wayne Rooney and Mario Gomez.

The list in full can be seen below:

Rank

Former player

Year

retired

Height (metres)

% of tweets calling them sexy

Golden ratio %

Final sexy score /10

1

Daniele De Rossi

2020

1.84

8.33%

84.85%

8.57

2

Nemanja Vidic

2016

1.9

4.56%

80.70%

7.80

3

Francesco Totti

2017

1.8

7.44%

78.61%

7.71

4

Gareth Bale

2023

1.86

5.64%

76.83%

7.42

5

Roy Keane

2006

1.8

6.23%

81.49%

7.08

6

David Beckham

2013

1.83

7.92%

69.49%

6.98

7

Pablo Zabaleta

2020

1.76

10.01%

79.68%

6.87

8

Martin Skrtel

2022

1.91

3.58%

81.96%

6.82

9

Wayne Rooney

2021

1.76

4.07%

78.21%

6.71

10

Mario Gomez

2018

1.89

4.77%

74.47%

6.58

11

Patrice Evra

2019

1.74

12.04%

75.53%

6.53

12

Sergio Agüero

2021

1.73

3.49%

84.28%

6.47

13

David Villa

2019

1.75

5.31%

79.52%

6.42

14

Vincent Kompany

2020

1.93

5.56%

73.57%

6.40

15

Gianluigi Buffon

2018

1.92

4.62%

77.53%

6.37

16

Diego Forlán

2019

1.8

4.22%

80.29%

6.19

17

Xavi Hernandez

2019

1.7

5.04%

77.96%

6.17

18

Gerard Pique

2023

1.94

4.91%

63.80%

6.00

19

Carlos Tevez

2022

1.71

3.37%

78.85%

5.58

20

Keisuke Honda

2021

1.82

3.04%

86.08%

5.57

21

Franck Ribery

2022

1.7

4.84%

70.76%

5.33

22

Gary Cahill

2022

1.93

2.51%

77.07%

5.32

23

Andrea Pirlo

2017

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