Social-media users are really digging their teeth into Uruguay's star forward Luis Suarez.

Twitter was abuzz after Suarez, who scored two goals in his team's World Cup victory over England last Thursday, took a bite out of Italy's Giorgio Chiellini on Tuesday morning.

Suarez actually chomped down on Chiellini's shoulder while the match was tied 0-0 in the 80th minute. It was Suarez's third — we repeat, third — biting incident in FIFA play, and will most likely lead to a suspension.

Of course, the unusual play drew a lot of attention on social media, particularly Twitter. As of 2:30 p.m. ET, roughly an hour after the bite, it had been mentioned 339,269 times, according to social-media analytics company Sysomos. Twitter users in the UK seemed to be the most interested in the transgression, accounting for 32% of all the mentions. (U.S. was second at 26%.)

Despite what appears to be a mad rush of Suarez tweets, the bite wasn't as popular as you might think. American Clint Dempsey's goal against Portugal on Sunday sparked more than 300,000 tweets per minute, and Portugal star Cristiano Ronaldo was mentioned 1.5 million times in total on Twitter during the game, despite failing to score (although he did have a late-game assist that broke American hearts).

.@clint_dempsey mentioned 465k times during #USA v #POR. Explore this @TwitterReverb LINK: http://t.co/wNr5TOUq5O pic.twitter.com/oGiybXyJbm

— Twitter Reverb (@TwitterReverb) June 23, 2014

 

.@clint_dempsey goal has 2nd highest peak of entire #WorldCup: these are the top #USA v #POR moments - UPDATED pic.twitter.com/D6QZB63ecX

— Twitter Data (@TwitterData) June 23, 2014

 

Twitter traffic isn't just heavy for matches featuring Team USA. Monday's matchup between Cameroon and Mexico generated 6.1 million tweets, according to Twitter.

As it turns out, fans appreciate good fútbol more than good meme material — although we certainly don't mind a little of both.

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