The jersey number worn by Gaetjens during the 1950 World Cup match against England remains unknown, with several accounts from family members and historians unable to verify various claims. The number was not recorded in an official match report; the National Soccer Hall of Fame stated the number was 18 and cited Walter Bahr, but he was unable to verify the claim. An unnamed ESPN producer for "Outside the Lines" who worked with footage of the match for a special dedicated to Gaetjens stated to an ESPN journalist that they were "98 or 99 percent sure" that the number was 18. Film controversy Gaetjens, although light-skinned, was portrayed by "dark-skinned" Haitian actor Jimmy Jean-Louis in the 2005 film The Game of Their Lives. He was also depicted as a practitioner of Voodoo, which outraged his family, leading them to proclaim how ludicrously inaccurate the interpretation was. In reality, Gaetjens, like most Haitians, grew up as a Catholic and went to church every Sunday. His sister, Mireille, voiced her displeasure and condemned the notion over a phone interview by saying: "Our family traded rum and coffee and ran schools... No family member was into voodoo. I've never even seen voodoo being practiced. Nobody in the family has ever even set foot in a voodoo church!" Personal life When Gaetjens first arrived in the US from Haiti, he was mistaken for Belgian of the Flemish-speaking part of the country, due to the sounding of his surname ending in -tjens and the fact that migration in waves from Belgium were common during the 19th century. However, his great-grandfather was from Bremen of northern Germany and the Gaetjens name is not common in Flanders. Although, a variant does exist over Germany's northern border in Denmark as Gätjens. Gaetjens was a fluent speaker of French, Spanish and English. Honors Club Etoile Haïtienne Ligue Haïtienne: 1942, 1944 Brookhattan Runner-up National Challenge Cup: 1948 Individual Inducted into the United States National Soccer Hall of Fame: 1976 France Football: World Cup Top-100 1930–1990 NSCAA Honorary All-America Award: 2015 Performances ASL Golden Boot: 1950 Career statistics References Notes Citations External links 1924 births 1964 deaths Sportspeople from Port-au-Prince Haitian footballers Haiti international footballers American soccer players United States men's international soccer players Columbia University alumni Haitian expatriate sportspeople in France Haitian expatriate sportspeople in the United States Haitian Roman Catholics Haitian people of German descent New York Brookhattan players