Marcus The Mystic Pig Predicts The Semi-Finalists Of The 2018 World Cup

Back in the ancient days of the 16th century, French physician and alleged 'seer' Nostradamus made a lot of predictions about a lot of things, including that the world would end in July 1999.

In fact, so many of his predictions - or, really, interpretations of his predictions - have been proved wrong that his place in the sphere of great psychics is probably down there with Mystic Meg now. And it's certainly below Mystic Marcus, a micro pig from Heage, Derbyshire, who seems to have taken over from Paul The Octopus (RIP) as the animal who's able to predict the outcome of the 2018 World Cup.

So far, according to his owner, Juliette Stevens, Marcus has correctly predicted the outcome of the 2014 World Cup, the Brexit referendum and the election of Donald Trump in 2016.

Now, the psychic pig has turned his attention to this year's World Cup and has predicted the four teams that will make it into the semi-finals. Spoiler alert: England isn't one of them - but then you hardly need to be blessed with psychic abilities to know that's probably true.

Anyway, Marcus has predicted that Belgium, Argentina, Nigeria and Uruguay will be the four teams battling for a place in the final. Which seems a little ludicrous, especially as Nigeria won't be able to rely on their lucky chickens for extra luck.

Marcus predicted the final four by eating apples marked with the flags of all the other teams. Of course he did.

"Marcus is the seventh child of a seventh child," explained his breeder, "and apparently they're gifted with special powers, so maybe that's where it comes from."

Now, we're in no way disputing the talents of this particular piggy, but given the rather audacious results of his picks, we think he may be proved wrong rather early on.

Of course, we're very open-minded about all this, and it would be rather cool if those teams did make it through to the semis - it would certainly be a change from the rotating cast of usual suspects who have been lifting the trophy for as long as we can remember now.

If it turns out that Marcus is indeed, we'll eat our hats. Or perhaps a nice, thick slab of bacon. Not Marcus, of course. That would just be wrong.