World Cup: Achilles the cat predicts who’ll win Russia vs Egypt tonight

Remember Paul from 2010 FIFA World Cup? The Octopus that had made some breathtakingly correct predictions of World Cup 2010 encounters, including that the mighty Germans were going to go down against Spain in the semi-final? Well in 2018, Achilles the cat has taken Paul the octopus’ position. So far, Achilles, a deaf cat, has correctly predicted the outcomes of the opening encounter between Russia and Saudi Arabia and the match between Iran and Morocco.

Achilles had made a prediction that hosts Russia will begin their campaign with a victory over Saudi Arabia. Russia actually thumped Saudis 5-0 to mark the beginning of World Cup 2018. The white-furred Hermitage male cat’s second prediction that Iran would win over Morocco also came true as Aziz Bouhaddouz scored an own goal in the last minute of the injury time (90+5) of the match, handing Iran a narrow 1-0 victory.

With two right predictions in his kitty, Achilles was on June 19 tasked with predicting the winner in the Russia-Egypt encounter later tonight. The cat, as soon as he was presented with the two bowls, rushed to eat from the Russian bowl. But in a mood to puzzle the spectators, Achilles also ate from the bowl with the Egyptian flag.

While the organisers are confident that he predicted a Russia win, is the cat hinting at a draw? Maybe he was predicting that Russia would score first but Egypt would equalise later? Or maybe he was just hungry and latched on to whatever food he got, without caring about which bowl he ate from first.

This year as well, there are numerous animals, including a dog, a pig, a tiger, an elephant among others.

One of the most interesting in the list is a pig, named Mystic Marcus. Mystic Marcus’ achievement is successfully predicting Britain’s exit from the European Union (Brexit) and Donald Trump’s election as the US President.

Presented with 32 apples adorned with flags of all the participating nations, Marcus decided to eat all but the apples bearing Argentina, Uruguay, Nigeria and Belgium flags, hinting that these teams will be in the semi-finals. But Marcus may have gotten it wrong this time as Argentina, Uruguay and Nigeria fall in the same group and at least one of them will have to bow out of the World Cup at the group stage itself!