Hand of Clod

By the time you read this, the nation may be in the grip of World Cup fever as England prepares to take on Brazil in the semi-finals. However, it’s not looking likely, what with Robert Green’s “hand of clod” moment having cost England two points against the USA.

Twitter coverage so far unsurprisingly peaked during the World Cup’s opening Saturday clash between two English-speaking, Twitter-hungry countries. No less unsurprisingly, the words “mistake”, “blunder” and the satirical “spill” were heavily used in the post-match analysis.

The service surely hasn’t been disappointed – in the past 30 days, we’ve recorded some thee-and-a-quarter million tweets featuring “World Cup” and “#worldcup”, which doesn’t account for those tweets discussing teams and individuals without mentioning the competition by name or hashtag.

And while some of Twitter’s users might not think football the winner just yet (“This World Cup is making me seriously like my job” - @njhamer), South Africa is emerging with considerably more credit.

For all the problems that preceded the event, they scarcely resonated in social media at the time and have since been thoroughly submerged in a vuvuzela howl of engaged tweeting.