Mario Goetze (holding trophy) scored the World Cup winning goal in the 113′ minute. Photo courtesy of Action Press/Zuma Press.
The World Cup ended on Sunday with Germany defeating Argentina 1-0 in extra time. This ended a thrilling month of passion, competition, and national pride across the world. The mystique of this special event was captured throughout social media, most notably on Twitter. For those not watching the game live, they could turn to Twitter and see a timeline full of commentary on the game. Twitter provided a unique experience and varying perspectives on the “beautiful game.”
Let’s take a look at stats from the World Cup:
- Over the course of the entire World Cup, 672 million tweets pertained to the World Cup. Whether it be about controversial calls, injuries, or goals, it truly was a global phenomenon.
- The game that set the Twitter record for most tweets during a single sporting event? The semi-final German domination of Brazil. That game saw a record 35.6 million tweets. For comparison, the previous record holder for tweets during a sporting event? Super Bowl XLVIII in 2013 that had 24.9 million tweets.
- The World Cup Final was responsible for a record of its own. When the final whistle was blown, indicating that Germany was the 2014 World Cup Champions, a Twitter record 618,725 tweets per minute were sent out.
- The players with the most mentions throughout the World were hometown hero Neymar, Golden Ball winner Lionel Messi, Luis “the biter” Suarez, and Cristiano Ronaldo.
- The United States had the most uses of #WorldCup as it was responsible for 23% of the over 24 million tweets containing #WorldCup. It was followed by the United Kingdom (9%) and Indonesia (6%).
It was evident that Twitter helped shape the World Cup so what better way to relive it. Courtesy of Twitter, check out this video:
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DFe_065RqUA&w=560&h=315]
My Personal Highlights:
While it’s a fun experiment to look at the overall impact of the World Cup. There were a few moments in particular that will always stick out to me.
Tim Howard definitely could have saved Richard Sherman’s now infamous rant about Michael Crabtree
- In the United States’ quarterfinal match against Belgium, goalie Tim Howard had an all-time performance with 16 saves. It was an awe-inspiring moment and the amount of memes that were instantly created, inspired one of my favorite hashtags of all time: #ThingsTimHowardCouldSave. Outside of Twitter, someone edited the Wikipedia page for the US Secretary of Defense so that it would display Tim Howard. After his performance, social media gave Tim Howard the royal treatment as a national hero.
- In a similar incident during the group stage, Mexican goalie Guillermo Ochoa was having at the time, the most impressive goalie performance of the World Cup. As he was making impressive save after impressive save against host nation Brazil, inspiring another onslaught of memes.
- Those individual moments will stick out the most to me, but the biggest lasting impression that I will maintain was the hours leading up to a USA game. The patriotism and support to rally around the team blew me away. The prevailing theme was “#1N1T” or better known as “One Nation One Team.” This hit home for me as it is common for professional sports to divide us. Your favorite team normally depends on what region you are from. For one month, it didn’t matter if you were from the Northeast or Southwest, we were all from the USA and that’s all that mattered.
What was your favorite World Cup moment and how did social media enhance it? Let me know in the comments or on Twitter, @PaulHaramis7.
