A row has broken out about the keeping of a tortoise between the pro-animal party PvdD and the Dutch embassy in the Brazilian capital, Brasilia, where the football World Cup begins on Thursday.

The embassy used Louis the tortoise to predict the outcome of the Netherlands’ first World Cup football match against Spain on Friday, the Telegraaf reports.

The flags of both countries were spread out in the embassy grounds and the tortoise headed for the dish of food next to the Spanish one.

‘If the Dutch team does it’s best, we do not need an animal to predict the outcome,’ PvdD leader Marianne Thieme told the paper. ‘It is bizarre that an embassy would keep a tortoise as a pet,’ she said.

A spokesman for the embassy told the paper Luis has been at the embassy for a year. ‘He has lots of space here and appears at the kitchen door when he is hungry. I do not think he would be better off in the wild.’