Women's football is often overshadowed by the original and altogether more manly version of the game.

Women's FA Cup matches were once shown on the BBC, but are now relegated to satellite. Despite women showing increasing interest in the sport, the world is choosing to ignore it, right?

Not anymore. The FIFA Women's World Cup final broke the record on Twitter for the most tweeted event in the social network's history.

The final match in Germany, in which Japan beat the US in a penalty shoot out, saw Twitter activity climb to 7,196 tweets per second by the end of the game.

The US missed three penalties, and Japan, which at the start of the competition was ranked fourth in the world, became the first Asian nation to win the trophy. So omedetou gozaimasu to them.

Previously, Japan's New Year's Day in 2011 was the most tweeted event with 6,939 tweets per second.

However, before all you women's football fans start to get excited at the prospect of saturated Premier League-style coverage, the new Twitter record is more likely down to the more prosaic explanation that the World Cup final was played between two of the world's largest populations of Twitter users.

For his part, Sneak was fuming when his favourite TV show was broadcast over an hour late thanks to the 'enthralling' extra time coverage. I mean, no sporting event is worth missing Family Guy for, right?

18 Jul 2011