The E.N.V.B.
The E.N.V.B. was established in the year 2005. The aim is to include all the books on football that appear in the Netherlands and the most interesting ones from abroad. Beside that, and certainly not least, the E.N.V.B website is meant to offer information about the content of books on football.

The E.N.V.B. is registered at the Chamber of Commerce of Amsterdam (number 34249769).

Press release
At the official start on 1 September 2006 the E.N.V.B. sent the following press release to the media:

E.N.V.B. officially started
After a trial run of a number of months, the Eerste Nederlandsche Voetbalboeken Boekhandel, or E.N.V.B. officially started on 1 September 2006. The E.N.V.B. is an internet bookshop specialised in books on football. The aim is to include all the books on football that appear in the Netherlands as well as the most interesting ones from abroad, particularly from England, Belgium and Germany.

The books can of course be ordered through the website, but the E.N.V.B. particularly wants to offer information about the contents too. The catalogue is organised by topic and geographically. There are book reviews, usually objective, of remarkable books on football, extensive descriptions, quotes and prepublications. Furthermore, reports of legendary matches are copied from standard books which are no longer available, such as Neerlands Voetbalglorie by Ir. van Emmenes and the reference works of Hans Molenaar.

The E.N.V.B. is a project by book seller Marcel Ficheroux, who got a look at one remarkable football book after the other in the year 2005. Ruy Castro's beautiful biography of Garrincha beat them all, but there was also Zwaar Leer by David Winner, about boarding schools, masturbation and football as well as Kan voetbal de wereld redden? (Can Football Save the World?), the confusing but intriguing epic by the Fleming Raf Willems who, for that matter, fails to answer the question he asks in his title.

The catalogue is certainly not free from personal preference, as a result of which books on football in the German Democratic Republic and Scotland are given disproportionately much attention. Just like books on subbuteo, professional teams of yore and biographies of prewar players from the United Kingdom.

As a small counterforce against the omnipresent commercialisation in football as well as in publishing, E.N.V.B. shall not include any advertisements or banners on its site. We are also against shirt sponsoring. In due time, antiquated books shall be on offer. There are also advanced plans to put out own publications.

How to order
If you wish to order a book from the E.N.V.B. catalogue to which no separate order form is attached, please make use of the general order form . If you do not know the exact title or the ISBN, or if you wish to order a whole list of books, please send us an e-mail info@envb.nl . Postage costs for dispatches outside the Netherlands shall be calculated per order.