INFOGRAPHIC: The World Cup Group Stage – By the Numbers

Soccer players ran more than 6,000 miles during the group stages of the 2014 World Cup. The distance is a little farther than a plane ride from Rio to Madrid — otherwise known as the premature journey back home for reigning champions Spain, who were comfortably eliminated.

This stat is one of several uncovered by theScore.com following a deep dive into the numbers behind the action from the opening round of the biggest sports tournament in the world. 

Click on the infographic to expand:

Highlights:

• More than 6.9 million tweets including the hashtag #WorldCup2014 were sent from the start of the opening game between Brazil and Croatia until the final set of group matches. Twitter traffic peaked during the tournament’s curtain raiser, which Brazil won 3-1, with further spikes occurring during German’s demolition of Portugal and the USA’s thrilling tie against Cristiano Ronaldo’s men. Other top tweets related to Ronaldo’s three haircuts (two more than the number of goals he scored) and the infamous Luis Suarez bite. (Data courtesy of Sysomos).

• Both Adidas and Nike executed entertaining pre-tournament marketing campaigns. But, on the field, it’s the three stripes narrowly leading the way, with Adidas boots scoring 61 of the 136 goals – just one more than Nike. Other manufacturers, including Puma and Mizuno, accounted for a mere 15 strikes.

• As you’d expect, every state in the U.S. was rooting for the home team. But their second favorite countries — based on subscriptions to theScore app’s team-specific alerts — varied state-to-state, with Brazil (36) coming out on top, well ahead of Mexico (8). There was love for Italy in just New Jersey, Delaware, Vermont and Connecticut, while poor England had to settle for West Virginia and Alaska.

• More than 2.4 million fans packed Brazil’s stadiums for the opening 32 games of the tournament, roughly equivalent to the population of Houston, Texas. Spain vs. Chile drew the biggest crowd, with South Korea vs. Russia the smallest.

• Honduras and Uruguay scooped join honors for dirtiest team. Both were given six yellow cards and one red card in their first three games. The ‘saints’ of the group stages were Germany, Argentina and Switzerland, with just one yellow card apiece.

• Best passer was Argentina’s Javier Mascherano, who narrowly beat out Italy’s evergreen Andre Pirlo, with an 89.4% pass completion rate.