TELSTAR GRAB THE SPOTLIGHT!

THERE is no other scoreboard in the world like the one at Sportpark Schoonenberg, the tiny ground of Telstar in the Dutch town of Velsen-Zuid. People who are not familiar with it might not even be able to guess its purpose. A massive white pole stands there, with woven fishing baskets placed nearby.

- MICHAEL YOKHIN

For every goal scored by the hosts, a basket goes up on one side of the pole. For every goal by the visitors it goes up on the other side. That is how they count them.

Jeroen Schoonakker, a 50-year-old volunteer with Down's syndrome, proudly takes care of the baskets at every single game. This season - almost unbelievably - he does so in the Eredivisie, the Dutch top flight.

To say that Telstar's promotion was sensational would be a massive understatement. Their budget, estimated at 2.6m, was the lowest in the second flight. They won just five of their first 18 matches; at that point a mid-table position would have been considered a major success.

However, a decent run in the spring enabled them to finish in seventh place, which meant they took part in the promotion playoffs.

That is when Telstar suddenly became unstoppable. They overcame Den Haag and Den Bosch, and then stunned Willem II in the final, condemning them to relegation with a 3-1 win in the return leg in Tilburg.

Therefore, a club named after a king was beaten by a club named after a satellite. Well, sort of. NASA launched Telstar 1 into space in July 1962, and it relayed the first publicly available live transatlantic television signal. Telstar 2 followed in May 1963. Coincidentally, that was the time when negotiations took place ahead of a merger between two small local clubs about 20km west of Amsterdam - Stormvogels of IJmuiden and VSV of Velsen.

"It was a healthy rivalry," former club official Lon Weijers explained. "IJmuiden is a port and a harbour, where the fishing industry is very important. Velsen is a bit further from the sea - a more industrial area with some factories. There was no place for two teams there, but it took a long time to understand it."