Spain beat Germany 1-0. Octopus prediction comes true

Mtoday

Durban, July 7:  Spain scripted history by qualifying for their maiden World Cup final since their first appearance 76 years ago with a 1-0 victory over three-time champions Germany to set up a summit clash against the Netherlands here today.

Central defender Carles Puyol scored the winner in the 73rd minute, heading home a corner in an absorbing semifinal which though lacked the spark in terms of goals and scoring chances, at the Mabhida Moses Stadium.

 

 

Spain’s best show in a World Cup before today had been a fourth-place finish in 1950 but at that time the champion team was decided after a final round league format.

Vicente Del Bosque’s ’La Furia Roja’ side will now take on the Netherlands at Soccer City Stadium in Johannesburg on July 11 in the grand finale which will saw a new World Cup winner being crowned.

 

Spain and the Netherlands, both world football’s underachievers, had never won a World Cup. The former had two European Championships titles -- in 1964 and 2008 -- in their kitty while the latter had been the losing finalists in the 1974 and 1978 World Cup. The Dutch had also won the European Championships title in 1988.

 

 

Germany will now play Uruguay in the third-place play-off match at Nelson Mandela Bay Stadium in Port Elizabeth on July 10.


’Psychic’ Octopus ‘Paul’ Predicted Germany’s Defeat

Berlin — A "psychic" octopus called Paul had tipped Spain to beat Germany in the football World Cup semi-final.

 

 

The eight-legged oracle who had successfully predicted all five of Germany’s games in South Africa, carefully weighed up the two teams, before plumping for Spain, prompting anguished groans from the assembled media scrum.

Carried live on national television, two plastic boxes, one with a German flag and one with a Spanish, were lowered into Paul’s tank at an aquarium in western Germany, each with a tasty morsel of food inside.The box which Paul opens first is adjudged to be his predicted winner.

 

 

Paul’s performance was replicated on the pitch on Wednesday night. Paul teased the crowd by initially lingering at the German flag before heading for the Spanish box. The mollusc medium has shot to fame by defying the odds with a perfect record of picking winners.

Proving he is not just attracted to the colours in the German flag, he rightly foretold the Mannschaft’s shock defeat to Serbia in the group stages.

He then predicted Germany’s triumphant drubbing of England in the last-16, provoking accusations of treachery. Paul should by rights be an England fan, having been born in Weymouth on the south English coast.

Confirming his reputation as a prognosticator par-excellence, he kept up his astonishing run of form by tipping Germany to beat highly fancied Argentina in the quarter-finals.

A note of caution: Paul has been wrong before. In the European Championships in 2008, he had an 80 percent record, getting only one match wrong. Which one? The final. Against Spain.