For continuous World Cup coverage, check out Mashable’s2010 World Cup Hub, which will be updated throughout the games.

Hey fútbol fanatics! If you haven’t noticed, World Cup mania has gripped the Twitterverse and turned the Trending Topics to an international free-for-all of cheers, team pride, and trash talk.

As every time zone on earth woke up to the start of the 2010 tournament today, the tweets began pouring in at full speed. Up until now, much of the Twitter discussion has been about team selection and some post-season injuries that have thrown the World Cup appearance of key players into question.

So which topics, teams, and players have been the most Tweeted about in the weeks leading up to the games? Check out the scoreboard below, courtesy of our friends at What The Trend, and Liz Pullen who compiled these charts for us.

Note: These are trends leading up to the games, as data for matches was not yet available at the time of writing.

---

Most-Tweeted World Cup Topics

---

Rank	Trending Topic Points	Topic	Explanation
1	964 points	Vuvuzela	A vuvuzela, sometimes called a “lepatata” is a stadium horn commonly blown by football fans at matches in South Africa. It emits a very loud monotone sound (like an elephant or foghorn) which some people find annoying. Expect to hear it a lot in the next four weeks!
2	906 points	World Cup Kickoff Concert	This opening concert started off the World Cup tournament with performances by Shakira, John Legend, Alicia Keys and other artists.
3	681 points	Galvão Bueno	A much disliked Brazilian football commentator that Twitters were telling “Cala Boca!” (Shut up!).
4	636 points	Soccer Aid	A pre-World Cup charity event for UNICEF that was played in the UK on June 6th .
5	370 points	Waka Waka	The 2010 FIFA World Cup competition theme song sung by Shakira. The song is originally from Cameroon in West Africa.
6	267 points	Tonka Tanka	A prime-time TV show in Chile, hosted by Tonka Tomicic devoted to the World Cup.
7	198 points	#labarratvn	#labarratvn
8	167 points	#WC2010	This World Cup hashtag will climb to the top of the list by next week!
9	45 points	Bafana Bafana	The name of the South African National Team.
10	45 points	Orina	Spanish for “to pee”, trending because officials are testing World Cup players for steroid use.

---

Most-Tweeted World Cup Players

---

The matches have only just begun today (June 11th), so we don’t have stats on first round results. However, trend data does reveal which players tweeters have been talking about this past week.

Rank	Trending Topic Points	Name	Team
1	360 points	Didier Drogba	Ivory Coast; might be sidelined by an injury
2	267 points	Neymar da Silva	Brazil; not selected for the starting team
3	240 points	Arjen Robben	Netherlands; might be sidelined by an injury
4	69 points	Felipe Melo	Brazil
5	57 points	Obi Mikel	Nigeria; might be sidelined by an injury
6	57 points	Dagoberto Pelentier	Brazil
7	39 points	Bruno César	Brazil
8	33 points	Edson Buddle	USA
9	27 points	Rio Ferdinand	UK; might be sidelined by an injury
10	27 points	Emile Heskey	UK; Heskey injured England captain Ferdinand during a WC training session.

Need more social media World Cup coverage? Of course you do! Head on over to Mashable’s World Cup headquarters, where you’ll find real-time data on match scores, social mentions, and links to all our previous news and features.