Tim Howard was mentioned in one of every five tweets during the Belgium match

Photo: Getty Images

Twitter reports that 9.1 million related tweets were sent during the United States-Belgium match with a whopping 1.8 million directly mentioning the unbelievable performance of American goalkeeper Tim Howard.

That total presumably doesn't count all the simple "Whoa!" "Wow!" and "Are You Kidding Me?" messages that were sent out every time Howard made one of his record-breaking 16 saves on the Brazil. But it's still an incredible number of its own and it's fun to see the spikes that occurred with every big save as the game wore on.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p>Over 1.8 m mentions of Tim Howard (<a href="https://twitter.com/TimHowardGK">@TimHowardGK</a>) during <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/BEL?src=hash">#BEL</a> v <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/USA?src=hash">#USA</a>&#10;&#10;LINK: <a href="http://t.co/oRBLfxa73O">http://t.co/oRBLfxa73O</a> <a href="http://t.co/iHObfXjCzl">pic.twitter.com/iHObfXjCzl</a></p>&mdash; Twitter Reverb (@TwitterReverb) <a href="https://twitter.com/TwitterReverb/statuses/484107517551603713">July 1, 2014</a></blockquote>

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As you can see in the heat map at the top of the post, Americans took to Twitter to talk about the match as it went along and Howard's dominance clearly dominated the conversation.

None of his individual saves, however, ranked in the most mentioned moments in the game, according to @TwitterData. The conclusion of the match drew the most tweets with 216,659, followed by Julian Green's hope-giving goal (187,413) and Romelu Lukaku's goal for Belgium (178,608).

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p>These were the most-mentioned <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/BEL?src=hash">#BEL</a> v <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/USA?src=hash">#USA</a> players on Twitter during the match <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/WorldCup?src=hash">#WorldCup</a> <a href="http://t.co/rdrKj7lCFU">pic.twitter.com/rdrKj7lCFU</a></p>&mdash; Twitter Data (@TwitterData) <a href="https://twitter.com/TwitterData/statuses/484117386048442368">July 1, 2014</a></blockquote>

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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p>These are the <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/BEL?src=hash">#BEL</a> v <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/USA?src=hash">#USA</a> moments that drove the most conversation on Twitter <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/WorldCup?src=hash">#WorldCup</a> <a href="http://t.co/bpHS0SUUy0">pic.twitter.com/bpHS0SUUy0</a></p>&mdash; Twitter Data (@TwitterData) <a href="https://twitter.com/TwitterData/statuses/484122980667371521">July 1, 2014</a></blockquote>

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Given that Twitter users vote for Man of the Match, it was no surprise to see Howard given that honour after the game — even despite his team's disappointing 2-1 loss.

Source: Yahoo Sports.