Ronaldo, Messi, Salah: The worst football thumbnails on YouTube | OneFootball

Videos on YouTube can be a great way to get your daily fix of football content.

There are plenty of brilliant channels that provide highlights, training videos and sometimes just a bit of fun. From football fails to football funnies, there’s usually something for every kind of fan.

But not every YouTube channel holds itself to a particularly high standard, resulting in some awful content, and more specifically, awful thumbnails.

While you may not know the name Adam Boultwood, chances are, if you’ve watched football content on YouTube, you’ve probably seen a video he was in some way involved in making.

Boultwood has previously worked on True Geordie’s The Kick Off, Football Daily and with Hashtag United. His latest job is working with content creators UMM, who recently collaborated with Ian Wright for the Movember charity campaign.

But his latest and greatest piece of content was a Twitter thread where he ‘studied the greatest YouTube football thumbnails ever.’

Boultwood created a ‘very serious and important thread’ looking at some of the most ridiculous thumbnails the site had to offer, and it is an absolute masterpiece.

The thread begins with an introduction from Adam and a thumbnail showing Argentinian superstar Lionel Messi pointing a gun at a referee… Yes, you did read that correctly.

He then moves on to the ‘little known incident’ between Son Heung-Min and Antonio Rudiger, in which the Korean famously received a red card for violent conduct after decapitating the German defender. Wait, that doesn’t sound right.

Next up in the thread, Adam offers some solid advice to YouTubers to ‘get creative’ but not ‘over the top’. So why not create an image of a flash flood that submerged nearly all of Turin and almost drowned Cristiano Ronaldo?

Moving on, we have an image of former Real Madrid coach Zinedine Zidane getting a little cheeky with Eden Hazard. As Boultwood rightly points out, it’s no wonder nine million people couldn’t resist clicking on this entirely plausible video.

The next thumbnail is probably the tamest of the lot, it shows a goalkeeper hanging upside down from his crossbar while receiving a red card. Adam’s simple caption for this one pretty much sums it up: “This one speaks for itself. I have nothing to add.”

In the penultimate tweet, Adam reminds everyone of the ‘most important rule’ when it comes to YouTube thumbnails – there are no rules. So why not use an image of Mo Salah with an aeroplane exploding on the pitch behind him? That seems reasonable, right?

The final tweet was a late addition offered up as a suggestion in the replies, and well, the less said about this one the better quite frankly.

Although that was the end of Adam’s incredible thread, I thought I’d treat you to a few bonus images that popped up in the replies…

First up, Cristiano Ronaldo attempting to cut an opponent in half with a chainsaw.

Who could forget the time Dembele played in a neck-brace and a sling while Xavi waved a gun around?

Or the recent incident when Barcelona manager Xavi had to run onto the pitch to provide Adama Traore with five fresh bottles of baby oil?

And last but certainly not least, remember when LeBron James was trying to defend Cristiano Ronaldo but ended up breaking his ankle? No me either…