Football legend, Lionel Messi’s post celebrating his World Cup win has now become Instagram’s most-liked post by a sportsperson with 51 million likes, and counting.

After Argentina’s thrilling penalty shootout win over France, the PSG star took to Instagram to post 10 pictures of the celebrations in Qatar.

In the 17 hours since he uploaded it, Messi’s post has racked up a staggering over 51 million likes, with the forward also surpassing 400million followers on the social media platform.

Messi accompanied the post with a caption that read: ‘WORLD CHAMPIONS!!!!!!! I dreamed it so many times, I wanted it so much that I still haven’t fallen, I can’t believe it……

‘Thank you very much to my family, to all who support me and also to all who believed in us. We demonstrate once again that Argentines when we fight together and united we are capable of achieving what we set out to do.

The merit belongs to this group, which is above individualities, it is the strength of all fighting for the same dream’.

It surpassed Ronaldo’s post from last month, an advert for Louis Vuitton ahead of the World Cup in which the Portuguese star and Messi were seen playing chess that had accumulated 41.9 million likes.

Ronaldo is still the most-followed person on Instagram though, with a staggering tally of 519 million.

Last month he became the first person ever to reach 500 million followers on the social media site.