ST. PETERSBURG, February 16. /TASS/. Achilles, St. Petersburg’s Hermitage oracle cat, will predict the outcome of the Champions League soccer final in St. Petersburg, Anna Kondratieva, the cat's owner and veterinarian of the Hermitage’s felines, told TASS.
"Achilles gladly accepted the offer to predict the outcome of the Champions League final match," she said.
As Saint Petersburg's Vice Governor Boris Piotrovsky told a TASS news conference on Wednesday, city authorities, having offered the cat to become the match’s oracle, hoped to obtain approval and continue successful endeavors with Achilles.
St. Petersburg won the right to host the Champions League final in September 2019. The Russian city was originally scheduled to host the deciding match of the main European cup in the 2020/21 season, but due to the coronavirus pandemic, most of the tournament's playoff games in the 2019/20 season were played in the Final Eight format, resulting in the previously scheduled finals being postponed a year ahead of schedule. The final game will take place on May 28.
Achilles, a blue-eyed cat with white fur, from the Hermitage, began his career as an oracle in 2017 during the Confederations Cup. The museum staff chose him out of all of the others for his ability to analyze and the feline’s unusual behavior. In addition, Achilles is assisted by his natural deafness - he doesn't succumb to stress during public events. The cat correctly predicted the results of three of the four games of the tournament, which were held in St. Petersburg, including the tournament's opening match and the final.
Achilles predicted the results of eight games of the 2018 World Cup in Russia. In the first four games, he unmistakably pointed to the winner, including twice predicting the victory of the Russian national team. After that, the cat was recognized as one of the best oracles of the championship, but then his predictions stopped coming true. He went into a slump three times in a row, as he pointed to the team that eventually lost. In addition, his prediction of the match for third place was ambiguous. Last year, Achilles acted as an oracle at the European Championship matches held in St. Petersburg. During that event, the cat correctly predicted the outcome of seven of the eight matches.