Spanish superstition

In my biography "Across the Shallow Waters" I relate two remarkable coincidences which occured during retirement in Spain. Having been evacuated from Bristol to Yorkshire during WWII I was once to find myself playing football for my Wakefield college against a team of Dutch schoolboys, refugees from the German occupation of their country. They were brilliantly coordinated and proved more than a match for us running out winners by 4-1. In Spain, fifty years later, I was to present a golf trophy to an elderly albeit energetic Dutchman, Yelle Housmann. Over dinner I learned of Yelle's war-time record, of his capture and imprisonment by the Nazis, and his subsequent escape to Russia where he was interned and put to forced labour. On relating to him my own boyhood experiences against his young compatriots,Yelle, to my astonishment, responded that he was very aware of the match, despite the fact that at the time he was in captivity thousands of miles away in the USSR. Yelle confirmed the score and was able to name some of the Dutch players. After the war Yelle had become an official of the Dutch Football Association where he had obviously applied his remarkable memory. It transpired that some of those young Dutch schoolboys were to go on to achieve professional status.