I got a whole shelf full of books for young boys (and girls), recounting stories of friends overcoming adversity to set up a football club or, once in a football club, become heroes where they were once zeroes. Though the stories often feature referees, these books are not of much interest to my collection but I’d still like to highlight one.

It is titled Op het nippertje (In the Nick of Time), with an enticing subtitle: Spannend voetbalboek (Tale of football suspense), was written by Daan van Ooyen some time in the early 1950s, I guess. It counts only 61 pages, but the one thing that merits mention of this book(let) here is its cover:

Yes, that’s an old-school referee in a jacket tossing a coin. Could anybody confirm this was the standard outfit in the 1950s, or did the illustrator draw upon his memories of yesteryear too? It’s bugging me…