Paul picks Spain, Mani on Dutch
Oberhausen (Germany)/ Singapore, July 9: Let the fiesta begin. Spain will win the football World Cup for the first time in their history on Sunday, according to Paul, the “psychic” octopus with a perfect prediction record.
The eight-legged oracle, who has become a World Cup sensation by correctly predicting all six Germany games, very quickly plumped for Spain on Friday carried live on national German television.
Earlier, the two-year-old mollusc medium also said that Germany, his country of residence, would defeat Uruguay in the third-place play-off game on Saturday.
In the now familiar routine, two boxes were lowered into his tank, each containing a mussel and the flags of the two opposing teams. The tentacled tipster went straight to the Spanish box, wrenched open the lid and gobbled the tasty morsel.
Friday’s prediction is expected to be the last for Paul, who in octopus terms is a pensioner, at the grand old age of two-and-a-half. Octopuses generally live three years at the latest.
Meanwhile, a Singapore parakeet which correctly predicted all four winners in the quarterfinals has picked the Netherlands to trump Spain for the championship, local media said Friday.
The bird, named Mani, has rapidly gained cult status among gambling-mad soccer fans who have been flocking to its owner’s shop in Singapore’s Little India district in the hope of winning big.
Local media reports said Mani used its beak to pick a card bearing the flag of the Netherlands over one with Spain’s national colours.
“With the World Cup in its final stage, Mani is now literally the talk of the town — and many are going with its prediction of the Dutch team winning its first-ever World Cup title,” Channel NewsAsia said on its website.
It said Mani and its owner, astrologer M. Muniyappan, used to see about 10 customers on an average day but now they entertain the same number in just one hour. It has been dubbed the “magical bird” by the local media.
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