In selecting so many winners, Paul has redrawn the art of sport prophecy
Social media have helped spread Paul's popularity. What started off as a sideshow somehow threatened to become bigger than France's early exit or Ghana's amazing run. Almost every Thai newspaper had Paul on the front page on Friday and Saturday whereas twitterers awaited anxiously his two final predictions. Time magazine has written an article about Paul, whose photos also featured on the homepage of The Guardian's football site. The craze was understandable, but where it will lead us to is a bit unimaginable.
Paul's rivals have started to emerge. In Singapore, a crowd of football fans gathered around Mani, the island nation's World Cup-forecasting parakeet, at the weekend. He crept out of his small wooden cage and, choosing between two cards, picked the one with the flag of the Netherlands. This means if Holland win the cup, Mani will steal fame from Paul in what will tantamount to robbery in broad daylight. Meanwhile, Thailand's panda Lin Ping joined the fray on Saturday morning, picking a bowl of Spain "milk" as opposed to the one with Holland flag attached to it.
The emergence of Octopus Paul and Parakeet Mani is a welcome addition to World Cup, whose power to invoke cultural charms has never been so obvious as in this tournament. South Africa, as has been editorialised by some, has shown the world how football should be celebrated. Now, the world's most popular tournament has exposed the superstitious side in us and may change the way we look at, say, villagers who worship trees in hopes of lottery jackpot numbers.
Superstitution and sport have long been bed-fellows. Many athletes are known to be very strict about wearing lucky clothing, carrying good-luck charms, eating a special meal before the game, or practicing crippling routines and rituals. Fans are no less superstitiously obsessive. Many will never change sitting positions when their teams are playing well, which also dictates that a toilet break is a no-no.
Octopus Paul has just reminded the world that even the "most sophisticated" beings harbour this feeling inside that maybe we are powerless to change destiny. And come to think of it, Paul is not at all a phenomenon. The real phenomenon is the fact that many newspaper readers turn to the horoscope page the first thing in the morning, that "spot-on" fortune-tellers gain faster fame than emerging good writers, that "prophecy" has to be key part of most religions or cults.
Uruguay's national team coach vowed to put Octopus Paul to shame by having his players clinch the third spot on Saturday, but that may have just served to amplify the world-wide hype after Uruguay lost 2-3 with a potential equalizer rattling against the bar in the very last second. Holland's players, when stepping onto the pitch for the championship match on Sunday, also faced a battle to change a destiny as laid down by an octopus. How Paul's predictions would weigh on Holland's players especially when, for example, the game went to penalty shoot-out must have been known by now.
This World Cup has left unique memories. Not only do we have a brand-new champion, a national team that has never won it before, but we have had animals overshadow footballing stars on the front pages around the world. Good-bye South Africa and see you in the "Football Nation", Brazil, in 2014. How great will that be? In the meantime, a four-year break will allow all the zoos across the planet to perfect the art of sport prophecy among their star forecasters.