Telstar: A Fans’ and Groundhoppers’ Guide

Club History

The club was founded in 1963, when two rival clubs in the town of Velsen finally decided to merge. The club crest shows the Telstar satellite together with a burning torch, on a red and blue background, the colours of the two founding teams VSV (The Reds) and Stormvogels (The Blues). The all white kit is meant to represent the clean sheet that football in the town would have after the merger of the two rivals. In line with the nickname of VSV, the Red Lions, fans quickly chose to name their new favorites the White Lions. If an earlier attempt to merge, in 1958, had succeeded the club would now have been called VSV Stormvogels, sporting an orange shirt. We thank the brave people who voted against such a historical mistake.

The club started their adventure in professional football on the second level, thanks to predecessors VSV beating later Telstar rivals HFC Haarlem in the third division’ s promotion play off final the previous season. In it’ s first season, Telstar directly won promotion to the top flight, and stayed there for 14 years, including a 6th place finish in 1974, and an appearance in the 1975 Intertoto Cup. That 1974/75 season the team just missed out on the play-offs for a Europa Cup II ticket.

However in 1978, struggling to find appropriate funds, the club were relegated and have played in the second division ever since. The lads have reached the promotion play-offs in 1979, 1982, 1994, 2001, 2005, 2009 and 2018, but on each occasion they have been wonderfully unsuccessful. In 2020 the team seemed to be heading to another play off ticket, but the league was then cancelled due to the Covid-19 virus outbreak.