A team of giant panda cubs that was lined up to predict World Cup scores has been given a red card by authorities just hours before kick-off, the animals’ keepers said yesterday.

The bears were billed by the media as China’s answer to Paul the Octopus — the surprise star of the 2010 tournament — after finding out they would predict match results by picking food from a choice of baskets and by climbing trees.

But representatives at the bears’ breeding base in the southwestern Sichuan Province said the pandas will not now get the chance to show off their predicting skills.

“The plan’s been halted by the authorities,” a spokesman at the China Center for Research and Conservation of Giant Pandas said, without elaborating.

Xinhua news agency had previously said the pandas, who are aged between 1 and 2, would select food from three bamboo baskets representing either a win, loss or draw during the group stages.

For the knockout rounds, the bears were set to pick winners by climbing trees marked with the national flags of the competing nations, it said.

It was hoped the pandas could match the fame achieved by Paul, the German octopus that correctly predicted the results of eight games at the 2010 World Cup in South Africa.

Paul, who used his tentacles to choose mussels or oysters from boxes bearing the flags of participating nations, died in October 2010, shortly after the tournament ended.

About 1,600 giant pandas live in the wild in China. They have a notoriously low reproductive rate and are under pressure from habitat loss.