‘Psychic’ Thai lion Boy successfully predicts four Euro 2020 match results
- The five-year-old white lion lives at a zoo in northeast Thailand and makes predictions by grabbing meat marked with national flags from a wire above his pen
- For Friday’s England-Scotland match, zoo observers ruled that Boy had made a clear grab at the Scots’ meat first, suggesting victory for the Tartan Army
Move over Paul the Octopus, Thailand has a new claimant to the football forecasting crown: Boy the “psychic” lion, who has so far correctly called four Euro 2020 matches.
Boy, a five-year-old white lion who lives at a zoo in northeast Thailand, makes his predictions by grabbing meat marked with national flags from a wire above his pen.
His oracular exploits recall cephalopod Paul, the salty seer who achieved global fame by correctly predicting eight 2010 World Cup matches from his aquarium in Germany.
Boy has notched four successes in the first round of matches, including world champions and tournament favourites France clawing their way 1-0 past Germany on Wednesday.
He also forecast the “Three Lions” of England’s win over Croatia, Netherlands’ narrow victory over Ukraine and Cristiano Ronaldo-led Portugal’s demolition of Hungary.
The only knock to Boy’s pride so far has been Spain’s unexpected goalless draw against Sweden, which he called for Luis Enrique’s three-time champions.
The tournament was postponed from 2020 to this year because of the coronavirus pandemic, and the delay seems to have helped Boy find some form with his forecasts.
“He previously predicted other football matches [in the English Premier League], but the predictions were not accurate,” Obkaew Janpatun of Khon Kaen Zoo said.
