By David Gold
July 4 – The 2012 UEFA European Championship final shattered a Twitter record when Juan Mata swept home Spain’s fourth goal in its comprehensive 4-0 win over Italy last Sunday (July 1).
Following the Chelsea striker’s 88th minute goal (pictured top), the record for tweets per second for a sporting event was broken with 15,358 being sent.
The previous record was set a year earlier in the women’s FIFA World Cup final, when the United States and Japan went to a penalty shoot-out, which the Asian side won.
The most popular player on the Twitter hashtag, measured by UEFA.com’s Player Browser, was striker Fernando Torres, who came off the bench to net Spain’s third goal in the 84th minute.
Despite an inconsistent tournament, his goal and assist in the final enabled Torres, also of Chelsea, to edge out Germany’s Mario Gomez for the Golden Boot, traditionally awarded to the tournament’s top goalscorer.
Torres, who attracted 18,000 tweets with his name – just 300 more than Mario Balotelli, the enigmatic Italy forward – netted three goals with one assist, the same as Gomez, during the Euros but the Spaniard’s tally was recorded in fewer playing minutes; in all six players scored three goals during the tournament.
In total there were 16.5 million tweets about the Euro 2012 final.
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