German Humiliation of Brazil in World Cup Semi-Final Smashes Twitter Records

Germany's 7-1 annihilation of Brazil has become the most discussed single sports event ever on Twitter, generating over 35 million tweets, peaking at over 580,000 tweets per minute.

The World Cup semi-final which took place in Belo Horizonte on Tuesday left 200 million Brazilian fans devastated at the nature of their team's capitulation and millions of Twitter users around the world were eager to join in the conversation.

The 35.6 million tweets sent during the game smashed the previous record for a single sports match which was set during Superbowl 48 in 2013 when the Seattle Seahawks defeated the Denver Broncos, generating 24.9 million tweets.

Brazil's last 16 encounter with Chile had previously broken the record for most tweets per minute at 388,985, but that record was also smashed last night when Sami Khedira scored Germany's fourth goal, generating 580,166 tweets per minute.

The most mentioned player in the game was German striker Miroslav Klose who broke the all-time World Cup scoring record last night, with his 16th goal seeing him edge past Brazilian legend Ronaldo who was in the stadium commentating on the game.

As you can see in the heat map below the six-minute period when Germany scored four goals in quick succession saw the biggest explosion of tweets during the game, though Oscar's consolation goal in the dying minutes of the game also generated a lot of messages on the micro-blogging service.

While many people took the opportunity to rub salt in the wounds of the Brazilian players and fans on Twitter, many of the German players were also quick to post updates on Twitter following the game.

Lucas Podolski posted this picture from the plane the German team took back to its base in Brazil, ahead Sunday's final against the winners of Wednesday's semi-final between the Netherlands and Argentina.

While the biggest Twitter users amongst the Brazilian team - Neymar and David Luiz - have remained silent, Dani Alves has posted a message in support of his team mates, saying he is privileged to be part of the group.