"Where the fire awoke" reads this sticker, and anyone who has seen the stadium on Beatrixstraat knows it's no exaggeration. This 15 x 5 cm sticker features the old double-decker stand, drawn pencil by pencil, with the floodlights proudly towering above and NAC in yellow block letters between the seats. Alongside it is the familiar shield logo, black and yellow, as we have known it for generations.
For fifty-six years, from 1940 to 1996, this was our home. It was here in 1975 that the "Avondje NAC" (NAC Evening) was born, when the new lighting system was considered by UEFA to be one of the best in Europe. The stadium itself is no longer there; houses replaced it, but that fire has never died out. Thirty years after its farewell, in the season that the Rat Verlegh Stadium itself turns thirty, this sticker belongs on your suitcase, your laptop, or in your mancave. For those who know where it truly began.
