The remarkable social media stats behind England’s World Cup victory

England’s dramatic victory in their first game of the World Cup catalysed a remarkable surge in activity on social media about the game – peaking at 52,000 tweets per minute after Harry Kane’s late winner.

Kane bagged his and England’s second in added time to secure a 2-1 victory in Volgograd, making the Spurs man the most discussed player of the night, ahead of Raheem Sterling and Jesse Lingard in second and third place respectively.

The most retweeted post of the match was from the Bradley Lowery Foundation, the charity created in memory of six-year-old Bradley who died in July last year.

England skipper Kane was also the most searched England player on Google on Monday night, followed by Leicester centre back Harry Maguire and Tottenham left back Kieran Trippier.

Despite only playing for the last 10 minutes, a promising competitive debut meant 22-year-old Ruben Loftus-Cheek was just behind as the fourth most Googled player.

After the game, the most-searched questions about the England squad were:

In England, the national side – who play again on Sunday at 1pm – are unsurprisingly the most searched team so far during the group stages – making up 23% of teams searched for.

Germany, who lost their opening match, come in second (15%) while their victors Mexico share 10% of search traffic. Brazil are third (14%) after their 1-1 draw with Switzerland.

The map below shows the most Googled teams by country so far, with Germany and Brazil garnering the lion’s share of searches.

Completing the list of most popular tweets of the evening were England’s official account announcing the starting line-up and Kane’s winner – and these two funnies.