St. Petersburg authorities hire oracle cat Achilles for 2022 Champions League final
In August 2019, the European governing body of football announced a decision to select Russia’s St. Petersburg as a venue for the final match of the 2021 Champions League at the recently-built new football stadium. However, the date was moved to 2022 due to safety reasons amid the global spread of the novel coronavirus.
Achilles the cat, a resident of Russia’s State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, is famous for his predictions for the 2018 FIFA World Cup and the cat also put his skills to the test once again at the 2020 UEFA Euro Cup, giving the correct outcome to seven out of eight matches.
«Achilles displayed unbelievable results [during the 2020 UEFA Euro Cup],» Piotrovsky said addressing a news conference. «I would say that he did not just simply guess, but correctly predicted the outcome of seven out of eight matches.»
«This is a remarkable result and we are all grateful to him for this,» the official continued. «There is nothing else left but to invite him to be an oracle of the [2022 UEFA] Champions League Final.»
«This is very logical and we hope that he will now have ample time to rest and prepare in order to find strength and to continue his work,» Piotrovsky added.
Bowls with cat food are traditionally placed before Achilles next to the flags of national football teams, and the cat makes his choice by eating from one of the two bowls in front of him and in doing so he selects the winner.
During matches of the 2020 UEFA Euro Cup in St. Petersburg this year, Achilles delivered correct predictions for the matches between Italy and Turkey (3-0); Russia and Belgium (0-3); Russia and Finland (1-0); Sweden and Slovakia (1-0); Belgium and Finland (2-0); Sweden and Poland (3-2); Spain and Switzerland (3-1 on the penalty shootout).
However, the oracle cat was wrong when he predicted a win for Poland in the match against Slovakia - the Polish squad lost that match 1-2.
The oracle cat
Achilles, the white-furred and blue-eyed cat from St. Petersburg’s Hermitage Museum, started his career as a fortune-teller during the 2017 FIFA Confederations Cup. The employees of the museum selected the cat for his analytical abilities and unusual behavior. Additionally, Achilles is deaf from birth, so he does not get stressed at public events. In 2017, Achilles correctly predicted the results of three out of four Confederations Cup matches that took place in St. Petersburg, including the first and final games.
In preparation for the World Cup, Achilles underwent physical training - he worked out on special fitness machines to lose weight and participated in public events to socialize and get used to the attention from the crowd.
Achilles applied his gift during the 2018 FIFA World Cup as well. He made predictions for eight World Cup matches - the opening game in Moscow and the seven games that took place in St. Petersburg. In the first four games, he flawlessly predicted the winners, and correctly predicted Russia’s victory twice. After that, he was named the best oracle of the tournament, but then his predictions ceased to pan out: the cat failed to divine the winning team three times, and his prediction for the match for third place was ambiguous.
2020 UEFA Euro Cup
The 2020 UEFA Euro Cup, which was postponed last year over the global outbreak of COVID-19, ran between June 11 and July 11, 2021 in various cities across Europe. Italy won the championship defeating England in a penalty shootout on the night of July 11 at Webley Stadium in London.
Russia’s second-largest city of St. Petersburg was picked as a venue. It was among the 12 cities initially proposed in Europe to host European championship matches. St. Petersburg was granted the right to host three group stage matches and one of the quarterfinals of the 2020 UEFA Euro Cup.
The decision to hold the 2020 Euro Cup, which celebrated its 60th anniversary in 2020, in various European states instead of in one or two hosting countries was made at the UEFA Executive Committee’s meeting in Lausanne, Switzerland, on December 6, 2012. It was the initiative of UEFA’s then-President Michel Platini, who proposed the concept of the 2020 tournament «EURO for Europe.»
Following the withdrawal of Bilbao and Dublin from the list of the championship’s hosting cities, the rescheduled 2020 UEFA Euro Cup was set to be staged in 11 cities, namely in London, England; Munich, Germany; Rome, Italy; Baku, Azerbaijan; St. Petersburg, Russia; Bucharest, Romania; Amsterdam, The Netherlands; Budapest, Hungary; Glasgow, Scotland; Copenhagen, Denmark; and Seville, Spain.