Taylor Swift fans appear to have had a significant impact on this year’s Golden Boy Award voting, pushing Real Madrid midfielder Jude Bellingham beyond former vote leader Alejandro Balde of Barcelona.

 

Balde and Bellingham appeared to be in a tight battle for the online, or “Web,” edition of the award, which is given out yearly by the Italian newspaper Tuttosport. At one time, the Englishman Bellingham trailed the Barcelona left-back by 13%, 43% to 30%. Balde recently informed the Spanish publication Mundo Deportivo that he “didn’t like” Swift’s music, a Taylor Swift fan noted on Twitter.

The article, which has been seen about five million times as of this writing, made an effort to enlist the support of Swift’s ‘Swifties,’ as his followers are known, for Bellingham’s cause. It succeeded. With nearly three million votes cast overall and 89.4% of them now going to the Madrid player, there has been a noticeable shift since the tweet gained popularity. While Jamal Musiala of Bayern Munich is in third position with just 0.7% of the vote, Balde’s share has fallen to just 8.3% despite the German’s followers also attempting to stoke Swifties’ enthusiasm.