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Tag: Euro 2012

  • Spain’s Euro 2012 Win Sets New Twitter Sports Record

    Sunday’s Euro 2012 final saw a dominant Spanish squad crush the Italians by a score of 4-0 – a performance that makes Spain the first country to win back-to-back European Championships, and throws their name in the running as one of the greatest teams ever.

    And while Spain was busy scoring goals late, putting and exclamation point on their win, people were tweeting their thumbs off. Yesterday’s match saw fans break the all-time Twitter record for tweets per second (sports related). According to the Twitter blog, global traffic peaked at 15,358 tweets per second as Spain scored their fourth goal.

    That shatters the previous sports-related Twitter activity record of 12,233 recorded at this year’s Super Bowl. Before that, then-Denver Bronco QB Tim Tebow helped set the record at 9,420 when his team vanquished the Steelers with some overtime playoff heroics.

    Overall, 16.5 million tweets rolled in throughout the course of the match.

    Twitter also gives us a cool visualization of mentions of the top 16 teams throughout the tournament.

    This data visualization shows how often people mentioned Europe’s top 16 national teams from the group stages through the final between Spain and Italy. You can see how often all of the teams were mentioned throughout the tournament and look at how mentions compare for competitors for each match. These different perspectives should give you a strong sense of how people reacted during the matches on Twitter. Look, for example, at the big spikes in Tweets that tend to occur during goals.

    Did you watch the game? If not, you can check out some of the highlights and gooooaaaalllllls below:

  • Mario Balotelli Sends Germany Home, Becomes A Gif And A Trend

    Italy’s Mario Balotelli singlehandedly ended Germany’s chances at winning the Euro 2012 Cup with two devastating goals in the first half. The first was a header thanks to a brilliant cross by Antonio Cassano. Balotelli simply cleaned up the mess. For his second goal, however, Balotelli completed the job with a fantastic goal, courtesy of a breakaway Germany clearly forgot how to defend.

    Due to UEFA’s ridiculous attitude towards Euro highlights showing up on YouTube, or, well anywhere else, acquiring footage of these goals is problematic. Adding insult to the UEFA’s lack of web-savvy insults is the fact that the official site is absolute horrible quality regarding Euro 2012 highlights. To wit, they can’t even be bothered to upload hi-def versions of these plays people love to watch. I mean, why monetize your content on YouTube when you can prevent the rest of the world from enjoying it?

    Or something like that.

    Anyway, one area the strong arm of UEFA’s content control hasn’t touched is the revitalized image format that is animated gifs, and while I haven’t seen one of Balotelli’s second goal, the one of his following celebration will live on, perhaps forever:

    (image)

    Hat-tip once again to Gilulmination for the great work. As you might expect, whenever something happens in sports, Twitter exploded with reaction to Balotelli’s goals and his celebration:

    Just ask Germany about the whack job Balotelli did to them.

  • English Police To Investigate Racist Tweets Following England’s Euro 2012 Loss

    Losing in the knockout stages of UEFA’s European Championship is never easy for fans or players alike, and as you might expect, fans of England’s football team were absolutely distraught following yesterday’s loss to Italy. England went down after losing yet another penalty shootout, thanks to the back-to-back misses by Ashley Young and Ashley Cole, both of which are black.

    During the aftermath of the loss, some English fans took to Twitter and stupidly used racial insults aimed at the two Ashley’s to express their anguish; and now, as reported by the BBC, it appears as if some of these fans may be facing some criminal charges for their tweets. The pushback was spearheaded by the West Midlands Police force, which also made extensive use of Twitter to counteract these misguided tweets, going as far advise Twitter users who may have been offended by the comments to also file reports.

    The following tweet embed contains some of the racist language in question:

     

    The West Midlands Police also responded directly the person who tweeted the racist language, @johnbcfcmillman, informing him of his offense:

    Another Twitter user, @Lapwnage, thought he could apologize his way out of the mess he created by tweeting, “All I got to say is this was just a joke, you guys need to relax, police know I was kiddin around and they won’t bother me hopefully, cheers.”

    The WMP shut that nonsense down in a hurry:

    It should be noted that both @Lapwnage and @johnbcfcmillman’s Twitter accounts no longer exist, but the WMP was prepared for that, as well:

    London’s Metro Police force as also acknowledged these incidents and is taking the appropriate action:

    Last week, I said something about “so much for sports being a unifying force.” Unfortunately, thanks to the “it was just a joke” stupidity of a few Twitter users, that adage once again is proven to be suspect. It could be argued, however, that the responses of the fans who issued complaints against these tweets also prove there may be some truth to that statement after all. In other news, how does the notion that Twitter interactions can be considered hate crimes fly in the United States?

  • Euro 2012: Germany To Hand Greece a Beating

    This match seems like a no-brainer, Germany has not trailed in a competitive match in two years, and it is unlikely Greece will be the first to do it. They will attempt to keep their defense back and attempt to stifle the German onsught for as long as they can, countering when an opportunity presents itself. To win they will likely have to deny the Germans a single goal and hope that a counter for them is successful, making the first goal in this match extremely crucial for their side. Expect Germany to do what Germany does best and punish the Grecians with physical strength in an onslaught of arial assaults.

    Kick-Off 2:45 PM EST

    Could this headline be more German? – “Be happy dear Greeks, the defeat on Friday is a gift. Against Jogi Loew, no rescue fund will help you.” Headline from German newspaper Bild.

    Greece captain Giorgios Karagounis is serving a one game suspension for picking up his second yellow card against Russia. He will most likely be replaced by AEK Athens Midfielder Grigoris Makos or PAOK’s Giorgos Fotakis. German Midfielder Lars Bender could be back against Greece after missing the game against Denmark because of a similar suspension. However Lars Bender could keep his position after scoring during his single game tenure.

    SB Nation:

    Lines: Germany, -1.5 (-105). Greece, +1.5 (-115).

    Odds: Germany, -375. Greece, +950. Draw, +450.

    Over/Under: Over 2.5, -110. Under 2.5, -110.

    MATCH FACTS

    from BBC Sport

    Head-to-head
    -Germany (including West Germany) are unbeaten in eight previous games against Greece, winning five. The only previous meeting at a European Championship was a group match that finished 0-0 in 1980. That result took the Germans through to the final, where they beat Belgium.

    -The most recent games came in qualifying for the 2002 World Cup. Germany won 2-0 in Hamburg in Sep 2000 and 4-2 in Athens in March 2001; Miroslav Klose is the only survivor from the last meeting – he scored in that match.

    Germany
    -The Germans have taken the lead in all three matches at Euro 2012, plus each of their 10 qualifiers, going on to win all of those games. They have not fallen behind in a competitive game since the third-place play-off against Uruguay at the 2010 World Cup (when they won 3-2 after trailing 2-1).

    -Joachim Loew’s side have won their last 14 competitive games (includes third-place play-off against Uruguay).

    -The average age of the starting XI against Denmark was 25 years and 107 days – Germany’s youngest ever line-up at a European Championship.

    -Germany (including West Germany) have never lost a European Championship quarter-final. They beat Portugal 3-2 at Euro 2008 and Croatia 2-1 at Euro 96. They also defeated England (1972) and Spain (1976) back in the days when quarter-finals were played over two legs prior to the finals.

    Greece
    -The Greeks have scored just one goal in each of their past eight matches.

    -In their three previous European Championships tournaments to date, Greece have either finished bottom of their group or won the competition outright (as they did in 2004). Therefore they have won all three of their previous knock-out games at the tournament.

    -Greece have never contested a penalty shoot-out at a tournament. They have missed their last three penalties – Giorgios Karagounis failed to convert a spot-kick against Poland in their opening game, and Giorgos Samaras and Kostas Katsouranis did likewise against Armenia on 31 May.

    -Against Russia, Greece equalled the tournament record for most shots blocked (12), matching England’s tally against Portugal in 2004 and against France in 2012.

  • Euro 2012 Gives Us The Best OMG Gif Ever

    Euro 2012 Gives Us The Best OMG Gif Ever

    ESPN deserves credit for their stellar presentation of the sporting event being watched by the whole world over, even the United States. No, I’m not talking about the NBA Finals, LeBron James, or Kevin Durant. While these three are indeed worthy of attention, the popularity of the NBA pretty much pales when compared to world-class soccer, especially on an international level.

    Besides, when’s the last time an NBA Finals game gave us a crowd gif as awesome as the one that’s coming up? No, the Mitch Kupchak doesn’t count. What we have is an Irish fan who’s clearly exasperated by something that happened on the field. Of course, the natural thought is she’s reacting to one of the many goals the Spaniards scored against the Irish, but if you look at the time stamp on the upcoming gif–25:28–there were no goals scored by Spain during that time.

    According to ESPN’s GameCast, at the 25 minute mark, Ireland surrendered a corner to Spain, so perhaps she’s upset with the linesman’s call. Maybe she thought it should’ve been a goal kick instead. Anyway, enough guesstimating. Here’s the gif in question, courtesy of Gifulmination:

    (image)

    Like I said, the best OMG animated gif you’ll ever see. It really is hypnotic.

    In fact, I’d be severely disappointed if this didn’t become the standard meme image to accompany the OMG saying from here on out. Of course, considering the game’s final score, Spain 4, Ireland 0, maybe the Irish fan was just exasperated about the beatdown that was forthcoming.