No other World Cup controversy compares to the one issue that’s the talk of U.S. soccer fans across the online community: red cards.

Thanks to a goalkeeping blunder in the 40th minute, the United States escaped with a 1-1 draw versus England on Saturday. The player responsible for the mistake, England’s Robert Green, was not only pulled from relative obscurity into the social media spotlight, but his error has helped to fan the flames of World Cup fever in the US.

Saturday’s USA-England game might have ended in a draw, but the game’s telecasts were the clear winners.

As the planet awaits the world’s biggest single sporting event, most of the pre-tournament World Cup Buzz is focused around the players who won’t be taking part or could be missing out. The Nielsen Company analyzed English-language online blogs, message boards and social networking sites and found that pre-World Cup player buzz was dominated by injuries.

With the World Cup kickoff just hours away, the tournament is on the mind – and broadband – of soccer fans worldwide. The Nielsen Company looked at the differences in what was driving the World Cup conversation online across seven different countries.

Nike is not an official World Cup sponsor but, thanks to some creative marketing, that doesn’t stop consumers across the globe from linking the company to the world’s largest soccer tournament. The Nielsen Company analyzed online blogs, message boards and social networking sites and found that the sports shoe and apparel giant was more frequently linked to the World Cup than any of the tournament’s official partners and sponsors.

The survey found that 34% of respondents believe Brazil will take home the Cup, 25 percentage points more than any other country.

Kickoff for the 2010 World Cup is little more than a week away and Nielsen took a look back to analyze U.S. viewing trends for the last World Cup.

An analysis of Major League Baseball’s opening week revealed more than half of the local markets outpacing last year’s viewing.

The Duke Blue Devils have received the largest percentage of online discussion among the Final Four teams in the NCAA basketball tournament.