I place very little faith in the idea of lucky numbers. Life is just a game of chance and there is no logical way in which any item or number could be empowered with the magic to bring good fortune.
I can understand if you are a parent and place significance on the numbers of your kids' birthdays, which of course have ‘lucky' connotations. But, as a cynical non-parent, I use that fact and then apply a crazy reverse-logic...
When I return to the UK, I always play the weekly lotteries, selecting six numbers between one and 49 in the hope of becoming a millionaire. Now, I figure that most people will base their number selection on the birthdays of siblings and children, so will swamp the range between one and 31. For me, the one thing worse than playing and not winning anything would be to somehow get lucky and win, but then have to share the windfall with too many people. So I choose the majority of my numbers between 32 and 49. This may reduce my chances of winning, but if it does come off at least I win BIG!
I am sure that most of us, if asked to choose a number between one and ten, will instinctively say seven, and indeed, that particular number is commonly regarded as ‘lucky'. Footballers have made it iconic over the years, as historically the number seven would have been assigned to the mid-field, which is basically the engine room of a successful team.
Number ten also has a special status; perhaps another footballer, our countryman Maradona, is responsible for that, amongst others. However, football protocol has changed so much over the years that now squad numbers are the norm, so the straight-forward one to 11 is no more. Now footballers can seemingly select their own numbers, looking to their own idols from other sports, and new desirable numbers have come to the fore. The one that comes to mind is 23, which was famously sported by the legendary Michael Jordan when playing with the Chicago Bulls in basketball. This is the number that my personal football hero David Beckham selected when he moved away from Manchester United to European and world football. Because of this, 23 has become my favourite number, both as a number in itself and split up as two and three.
Now, true to form, and despite my opening statement, I'm going to reveal that number 23 has proved incredibly lucky for me in two different games of chance that defy all common sense - and the connection to Beckham is the key to its power. Much like the great man himself, as long as I don't rely on it to deliver every time, on selective occasions it unleashes its magic like the last-minute free kick in extra time against Greece that took England to the World Cup!
Contradictib-ly yours
