The 2010 World Cup has been so poor that an Octopus and a Parakeet have usurped soccer stars as the new media darlings ahead of Sunday’s showdown between Spain and Holland.

If it wasn’t for Germany and Ghana and some of the so called lesser nations the 19th World Cup would have imploded at the last 16 stage and descended into farce.

As for the sybarite efforts of England, Italy, Portugal and the appalling French, the less said the better.

Spain are no great shakes either, while Holland have hacked their way into the final courtesy of their central midfielder Mark Van Bommel.

Mr Van Bommel, a thug, should have been arrested around the quarter final stages and incarcerated on Robben Island in Nelson Mandela’s former cell.

How did the Dutch evolve downward from total football to total thuggery in such a short space of time?

Meanwhile, Paul the Oracular Octopus, who is based in the Sea Life Centre in Oberhausen, has the distinction of predicting all of Germany’s results correctly throughout this tournament.

And despite being based in Germany, Paul, who our neighbours claim was hatched in England, is not afraid to be objective.

He correctly predicted that Spain would beat Germany in the last four – a dodgy enough pick from his perspective given the amount of seafood restaurants in the area.

His selections – two boxes of food adorned with the national flags of the teams in question are dropped into his aquarium and he picks one or the other – for the 3rd place play -off and the final are Germany to beat cheating U-are-gay and Spain to add the World Cup to their European title.

Fair enough. However, Singapore  are claiming that they have a parakeet (Mani) pundit to challenge Paul’s reputation as the world’s leading soccer seer.

According to reports, Mani  has “pecked” Holland to be crowned champions. The parakeet, using his beak, makes his selections by turning over cards featuring national flags.

Mani reminds me of a Limerick-based parrot from a few years back who had the risible habit of squawking “Up Tipp” when someone entered the pet shop.

This was amusing up to a point, that point being when the above hurler-on-the-perch started articulating his support for the Premier County to innocent Shannonsiders in the lead up to a Limerick versus Tipperary Munster hurling final. He was removed from the premises.

Meanwhile, TV stations across Europe interrupted their schedules on Friday as Paul – Paddy Power will  put a contract out on him if he doesn’t stop getting it right – made his selection.

After running his many tentacles across the finalists for what was described as, “three-tense-prophetic-cephalopod-minutes”,  Paul selected Spain.

“It’s Spaaaaaaaaaaaaaain”, screamed a Spanish TV journalist, totally losing the run of himself.

So who will be right? Will it be Paul the Psychic Octopus or Mani? I’m going with the octopus myself.  He hasn’t been wrong so far and I reckon Mani is a bit of a bluffer.

Meantime, looking forward to Brazil 2014. As for South Africa 2010. It started with the drone of the intensely annoying vuvuzelas and, with the exception of Germany, Ghana,  USA, New Zealand and a few others, it descended rapidly downhill from there.

The 19th FiFa World Cup in South Africa – probably the poorest in the history of the tournament.