Reuters Soccer Blog

There are only three things that are certain in life — death, taxes and the World Cup predictions of a British-born octopus in western Germany.

That being the case, there’s hardly any point in playing Wednesday’s semi-final between Germany and Spain — the Spanish have got it won.

Paul the Octopus has spoken, eating his food from the container with the Spanish flag at Sea Life and thus sealing Germany’s fate.

Paul has a perfect World Cup record — correctly predicting the results of all five of Germany’s matches so far, even the shock defeat against Serbia, and scoring exactly the same number of goals as Lionel Messi and Wayne Rooney into the bargain.

German hopes are dangling by two tiny threads.

Firstly, while Paul has a perfect record here, he did get one match wrong at Euro 2008, predicting a German win over Spain in the final. Secondly, coach Joachim Loew has been persuaded not to wash his famous blue jumper before the end of the World Cup.

The baby blue cashmere number has become a good luck symbol, which leaves us with an intriguing match in store for Wednesday — the octopus versus the goat-hair.