Trains, petri dishes and a struggling sea lion join football's dubious oracles

LEIPZIG, Germany : Spare a thought for Hilla the 'oracle' sea lion from Leipzig Zoo, whose reputation for football prophesy is hanging by a thread after she predicted Scotland would hold Germany to an unlikely draw at Euro 2024.

Had she not watched the two sides? Did she know nothing of football history and Scotland's repeated failures at major tournaments? Seemingly not and the 5-1 thrashing dealt out to Steve Clarke's side by the hosts has called Hilla's soothsaying credentials into question.

No major football tournament would be complete without a host of fortune-telling animals but surprisingly, or perhaps not, not all of these 'oracles' turn out to be very good.

Hilla has since regained some respectability by correctly predicting Germany would beat Hungary, a result that immediately elevated her above Oobi-Ooobi, another Leipzig based clairvoyant, in the oracle league table.

Poor Oobi-Ooobi, a koala who looked less than impressed to be hauled in front of a camera to do his soothsaying, was a designated oracle at Euro 2016, but just couldn't catch a break. Forced to choose between eucalyptus leaves in containers bearing the competing countries' flags, he got it wrong every time.

Of course, like all oracles, it is possible that their messages are just misunderstood.

When the Oracle at Delphi famously told Croesus, King of Lydia, that if he waged war on the Persians he would destroy a great kingdom, he was delighted. A kingdom was destroyed, but it was his own.

So when Hilla, who seemed equally comfortable with both her left and right flipper, knocked the German and Scottish balls towards goal, she could just have been predicting a second-half consolation for the Scots and not the unlikely draw her keepers assumed.

There