FC What?

Even to the biggest football geek, FC Thun are pretty much a mystery. With a budget of 3.2 million euros, three times less than Thierry Henry's reported annual wages, the small club which was only promoted into the Swiss Super League three years ago, clinched second place in the top flight last season.

Thun then eliminated Malmo (1-0 away, 3-0) and Dynamo Kiev (2-2, 1-0) to enter the group phase of the big-bucks, prestigious Champions League.

The club's success story would not have been possible without Urs Schonenberger. The coach arrived in January 2005 to replace the club's emblematic boss Hanspeter Latour.

After losing no less than eight key players during the summer transfer window - such as goalkeeper Fabio Coltorti, David Pallas or Michel Renggli - the coach turned to foreign players - à la Sam Allardyce - and built an international squad with four Brazilians, one German, one Austrian, one Australian, one Cameroonian and one Senegalese.

But, whatever the nationality, the secret was mentality in choosing the right players:

"Of course it is not easy when you have to replace 7 or 8 players. Since I took over we have ten new players in the team. It is difficult to get players who fit into the team," Schonenberger told Eurosport.

To symbolise that integration of newcomers, the club's five Brazilians arrived over the last eight months. Tiago Bernardi is one of them and his adaptation to a new country was made easier by the presence of his compatriots.

But if there was one player to pick out from Thun's team and label him as a star, it would surely be Mauro Lustrinelli. The striker joined the Swiss club in the winter of 2004 and revealed himself as one of the best strikers of the country.

Scorer of 20 goals in last season's Super League, he lifted his team in Europe with three goals in four matches so far in this season's Champions League.

According to him the key of success is in the perfect mentality of the players.

"There's no rivalry in the team," vouched Lustrinelli. "Everybody works in the same direction. Nobody is jealous of anybody. We can win something great here if we do that together. Many players here are very clever. Our strength is exactly there, in the dressing room."

However, Thun will have to change dressing rooms for the Champions League home games as their Lachen stadium only boasts a meagre 878 capacity!

So Thun will instead welcome Sparta Prague in Bern's Stade de Suisse in Bern with a capacity crowd of 32000. And their three home games are already sold out!

Captain Andres Gerber, who is unlikely to play against Sparta on Tuesday due to an Achilles heel injury, reckons that the population of the region recognises themselves in the values of the team.

"People don't back stars here," he said. "Stars don't correspond to the region mentality. We are very modest here. The people here in the region and the team correspond very well together."

But what's next for Thun? The Champions League money is very welcomed but the club's directors want to stay small and reasonable. Former player and sporting director of the Young Boys, Werner Gerber is keen on keeping this mindset.

"We have to think a lot of what we'll make with the money," Gerber admits. "But our managers are very wise, we want to stay the little FC Thun that is nice, with family spirit. Now it's not really easy to stay like that."

If they keep surprising the top flight of European football, they won't stay small for very long.