Guillermo Ochoa's Saves

About

Guillermo Ochoa’s Saves are a series of photoshopped images praising Mexican goalkeeper Guillermo Ochoa for his remarkable performance during the group-stage match against Brazil at the 2014 FIFA World Cup.

Origin

On June 17th, 2014, Mexico played against Brazil in their second group-stage match at the 2014 FIFA World Cup. Pitted against a star-studded team playing in their home country, Mexico maintained their line of defense throughout the game and concluded the match in a goalless draw, thanks to an especially spectacular performance by the 28-year-old goalkeeper Guillermo Ochoa. He was named the Man of the Match for making at least six crucial saves to prevent Brazil from scoring a goal.

Following the game, fans began posting photoshopped images praising Ochoa for his impressive performance.

¡San Memo Ochoa! pic.twitter.com/LUjNpDdT9Y
— Mark Tacher (@MarkTacher) June 17, 2014

Spread

The same day, Twitter user Good Bull Hunting posted a photograph of a spectator reacting to Ochoa’s save with her mouth agape to form an “O” for the caption “Ochoa,” which gathered over 1,100 retweets and 700 favorites in the first 24 hours.

OCHOApic.twitter.com/XxDm2XmsWh
— Good Bull Hunting (@GBHunting) June 17, 2014

Meanwhile, Redditor dunkyfunky posted several animated GIFs featuring Ochoa’s saves to the /r/worldcup^[5] subreddit (shown below).

Also on June 17th, 2014, several news sites highlighted notable examples of the photoshop meme, including Fansided,^[2] Gamedayr^[3] and Bleacher Report.^[4] According to the Twitter analytics site Topsy,^[1] there were upwards of 2.61 million tweets containing the keyword “ochoa” posted that day.