World Cup 2010 – Paul the Octopus has retired from “predictions”
While the FIFA World Cup 2010 was going on, a new “legend” came into being; more like a myth. Paul the Octopus – people believed that Paul the octopus can predict all the World Cup results. Paul was born in England and was residing in an aquarium in Germany. The English aquarium’s guardian did not know about his “prophecy” skills while the Germans were able to see how the octopus can “show” them who the winner of the match is.
It all started back in the European Championship which took place in 2008. Paul the Octopus suddenly came into picture during that tournament when someone showed that the Octopus can easily show who the winner is. It used to work like this; two containers full of clams were lowered into his tank and both the containers had a flag of a country. The octopus used to open the lid of one container and used to feed from it. The container which he ate from would be the team who is going to win. It was simple and no one really knew how he did it. In the European Championship 2008, he was set to predict all of the German matches. He predicted them all correctly except two; the one against Croatia which Germany actually won and the match against Spain, which was the final and the Germans lost.
This year round, when the FIFA World Cup 2010 started; Paul came back onto his job to start predicting matches again. No one really knew about Paul at first as he started predicting matches for his country, Germany. The Germans started their FIFA World Cup by facing Australia. Paul went onto predict the result correctly as he ate from his country’s container and Germany won the match by thrashing the Australians 4-0. In their second match, he showed the world what he can actually do. The impressive Germans had to face Serbia, who were actually the underdogs. Paul chose Serbia over the Germans and later on the Germans found themselves at the wrong end of the result. Germany lost the match as Paul started to impress the fans and especially the bookies. In the third match, Germans had to face Ghana who were pretty impressive during the group stages. Paul chose Germany over the African Stars and Paul was right again as the Germans won the match 1-0 to qualify for the pre quarter finals, along with Ghana.
In the pre quarter finals, Germany was set to face Fabio Capello’s English side. England were having a pretty disappointing World Cup but this match was supposed to be filled with excitement. Paul chose Germany over England and Paul was right again. The Germans just totally smashed the English side with a 4-1 victory over them. The match ended as the Germans advanced to the quarter finals to face Diego Maradona’s “all-winning” Argentina. The match was supposed to be a thriller as the headlines read “FIFA World Cup 2010 final comes early as Germany faces Argentina.” Before the match took place, Paul ate from the container which had Germany’s flag. The Germans won the match 4-0 and defeated the very impressive Argentinean side with a 4 goal margin. After the match Paul received death threats from the Argentinean supporters and that showed how famous he was beginning to get. The Germans, on the other hand, qualified for the semi finals and had to face Spain. Spaniards and Germans had a 50% chance to win the game while Paul was sure that the Spanish side is going to win the game. The match was won by the Spaniards as Paul was right again. The fans were angry yet very disappointed and astonished that Paul was correct again. They thought that last time in the European Championship, Paul could not predict correctly and he might not predict it right again, but Paul was right and Spaniards advanced to the final. Germany, however, was now supposed to face Uruguay in the match for the 3rd and 4th position. Paul correctly predicted that Germany is going to win and even though Diego Forlan gave all that he could for his Uruguayan side, Uruguay could not win the match. Paul extended his streak and predicted all of the matches correctly. Later, Paul was made to predict the final between Spain and Netherlands. He showed everyone that Spain is going to win the final and yet again he was correct and his streak went on to 8, which is ironic because basically octopuses are famous for their 8 legs and not their World Cup predictions.
After the win, Spaniards wanted to bring Paul to their aquarium and offered a good amount of cash but the Germans disagreed. Now, Paul wants to retire from his “predictions” as the sea life spokesman said:
"The intuitive invertebrate will go into retirement and do what he likes to do best!"
It’s obvious how people are going to miss Paul and how he used to predict things but Paul is retiring and will not be predicting again.
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