The Secret behind Chinese Characters - Prediction of the World Cup results

With the final match scheduled today the World Cup has almost come to an end, and this gives me the chance to write about a photo that recently went viral on the Chinese social media platforms of Weibo and Wechat depicting a prediction of the outcomes of the World Cup using Chinese characters.

In the photo, the black characters are the words for Germany, Argentina, Holland and Brazil (left to right), while the red strokes singled out within the characters reveal four more characters: one, two, three and four…

According to the Chinese characters, the outcome of the World Cup should then be

1^st Place: Germany 德国 [dé guó] ➔ 一 [yī] one

2^nd Place: Argentina 阿根廷 [ā gēn ting] ➔ 二 [èr] two

3^rd Place: Holland 荷兰 [hé lán] ➔ 三 [sān] three
4^th Place: Brazil 巴西 [bā xī] ➔ 四 [sì] four 

In the match played yesterday Holland won over Brazil taking the 3^rd place, so the prediction for 3^rd and 4^th place actually turned out to be right!

Will Germany be the winner of 2014 FIFA World Cup? After today`s final match it will be fun to see if the prediction was 100% right!