Twitter code determines the most exciting goals of Euro 2016
The just-finished Euro 2016 tournament had its share of exciting goals, but how do you decide which ones were the most thrilling? If you’re Twitter, you leave it up to code. The social service has posted an interactive chart that shows the most exciting goals from the football/soccer tourney as judged by a peak detection algorithm sifting through tweets. It didn’t just count the sheer number of tweets in response to a goal, either — each goal counts as a percentage of a game’s tweets, so group stage matches carry as much weight as those from the knockout rounds.
Using those criteria, the results aren’t entirely what you’d expect. While late goals were more likely to have people on the edge of their seats, it wasn’t necessarily the game-clinchers or big teams that had everyone enthralled. Éder’s tournament-winning goal for Portugal produced only middling excitement. The most captivating goals were from underdogs like Northern Ireland (during its first win in a major tournament), Wales (in its quarter-final victory over Belgium) and Iceland (when it stunned Austria in the group stages). We’re sure that some human fans would beg to differ with the findings, but they’re still worth a look if you’re curious about how your favorite moment stacks up.
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