Holy cow Geeta of Faridabad plays Octopus Paul

German Ambassador to India Michael Steiner is certainly a maverick diplomat. He got the German embassy to transport a cow — all the way from Faridabad — to get her to pick the possible winner of the first-ever all-German European league final. The cow, Geeta, had two food-boxes in front of her at the lush-green embassy lawns, named Champions League finalists — Bayern Munich and Borussia Dortmund — and, after some thought, picked FC Bayern Munich as the winning team. And, late on Saturday night, the prediction turned out to be right. The German envoy has already declared the "holy cow" as the successor to Paul, the Octopus, which used to predict winners at the last FIFA World Cup.

"Holy cow 'Geeta' who predicted the outcome of the final already on Friday had the right gut feeling. No spot-fixing involved!" said Ambassador Steiner.

On Friday, ahead of the Champions League final, Ambassador Steiner had hosted "New balls please" - a football discussion on the greatest pastime in the world, bringing together prominent experts such as Wim Koevermans, headcoach of the Indian National Team, Novy Kapadia, leading Indian football commentator, Vijay Lokapally, Senior Sports Editor of "The Hindu" as well as Sandra Petersmann, ARD Radio New Delhi, adamant fan of the 1. FC Cologne.