SPORT FOCUS by NewsVibe. Map of this week's sports topics

David Popovici's medal-winning and record-breaking performances at the European U23s, the Wimbledon tournament developments and Cristi Chivu's Inter's elimination from the Club World Cup mark a week in which the online sports conversation has clearly diversified: after a period dominated almost exclusively by domestic soccer punctuated periodically by national team performances, the public's attention is now divided between swimming competitions, Grand Slam tennis, the recital of elite soccer clubs held in the US, and Formula 1, a recent visible and constant presence on the sports talk agenda.

Grafic NewsVibe. Map of the entities that have provoked the most mentions in sports-related articles and posts in the past week

David Popovici's performances definitely dominated the conversation: on Sunday, at the U23 European Championships in Šamorín, Slovakia, the Romanian swimmer lowered the continental record in the 100m freestyle to 46.71 seconds (the second fastest time in history) after having also won gold in the 200m freestyle two days earlier. His results on the banks of the Danube have put him back in the global spotlight and put Romania at the forefront of this week's sports visualizations.

In domestic football, FCSB remained in the spotlight with Tuesday, July 1's 2-2 friendly against FC Utrecht in The Netherlands - a test that opened the series of training matches in the battalion's training camp; there was also intense talk about transfers, as well as anticipation of the Super Cup with CFR, played on Saturday, July 5. Rapid continued their series of test games with a 2-2 draw with Sabah on June 29, while CFR Cluj made official the transfer of Nigerian defender Kenneth Omeruo, a free agent brought in to strengthen Dan Petrescu's defense. Universitatea Craiova came to the fore on June 26 when it confirmed the transfer of Japanese midfielder Takuto Oshima to FC Noah, the club's first significant summer departure.

At the Red Bull Ring Formula 1 circuit, the Austrian Grand Prix provided Lando Norris with his third success of the season: the McLaren driver converted pole position into victory on June 29, overtaking team-mate Oscar Piastri and closing the gap to the championship leader to 15 points.

At Wimbledon, defending champion Carlos Alcaraz (Spain) made it through to the third round without a fight, overcoming Britain's Oliver Tarvet 6-1, 6-4, 6-4 on Wednesday, in an event already marked by a record number of top seeds eliminated in the first two days.

In the United States, the final tournament of the World Club Cup produced a big surprise: Inter's Cristian Chivu was knocked out in the round of 16 by Fluminense (0-2, June 30), while Real Madrid advanced to the quarterfinals, where they will meet Borussia Dortmund on July 5 at MetLife Stadium; the Italian press notes tensions in the Nerazzurri dressing room, with Chivu calling a crisis meeting to calm tempers after the defeat, amid the ripples caused by captain Lautaro Martinez's statements about Calhanoglu.

*****Syndicated via a monitoring feed provided by NewsVibe Romania. The analysis is based on a Machine Learning model developed by the NewsVibe team, which has been trained to classify the content extracted from relevant online sources according to the topic. The presented data has been enhanced using Artificial Intelligence tools.