The Little Professor of Soccer — Leo Baumgartner (1968)

First edition, first published 1968 by Marketing Productions Pty. Ltd., Bondi Junction, NSW. Softcover, green and black pictorial cover featuring a soccer-ball graphic on the rear listing Australian club sides (Prague, Apia, Hakoah, Canterbury, South Coast) and player surnames. This autobiography of Leopold “Leo” Baumgartner holds a special place in Australian soccer history as the first notable published biography of an Australian soccer player,  despite Baumgartner being Austrian-born. It covers his lifelong dedication to the game, from Vienna through England, the USA, South America, North Africa, the Middle East, Mexico, Russia, and New Zealand, before he settled in Australia in 1958,  playing for clubs including Sydney Prague, APIA Leichhardt, and Sydney Hakoah. The book is short — just over 100 pages — has been long out of print, and survives in only a handful of Australian library collections,  making surviving copies genuinely scarce.

Cracking /creasing to spine and cover edges, a small chip/hole to the back cover near the “Apia” text, foxing/spotting to a number of page edges (rear corner shown). Text block otherwise intact.