The animal was choosing the winning team's flag when given a choice of two tasty mussels on live television.

Common octopuses live an average of no more than three years, so Paul was not expected to work at the next big football event, which is Euro 2012 in Poland and Ukraine.

The Oberhausen Sea Life Aquarium is now considering giving Paul his own burial plot and will also produce a DVD compilation about him and his wonderful achievements.

The sad news did not go unnoticed by internet users around the globe, especially in Russia as the word “Пауль” – the octopus’s name written in Cyrillic letters – has made it into the trending topics of Twitter microblogging service.

It became the second ever Russian word to do so, after “дождь”, which means ‘rain’, puzzled foreign World Wide Web users this summer.

It seems the only man on the planet, who wasn’t sorry to hear about Paul, was former Argentina coach Diego Maradona.

“I am happy you’re gone psychic octopus, it's your fault we lost the World Cup,” he wrote on Twitter.

One of Paul’s predictions was Argentina’s loss to Germany in the semifinals of the World Cup, after which Maradona quit his job.