Chelsea F.C.: Difference between revisions

Association football club in London, England

Football club

Chelsea Football Club is an English professional football club based in Fulham, West London. Founded in 1905, they play their home games at Stamford Bridge.^[5] The club competes in the Premier League, the top division of English football. They won their first major honour, the League championship, in 1955. The club won the FA Cup for the first time in 1970, their first European honour, the Cup Winners’ Cup, in 1971, and became the third English club to win the Club World Cup in 2022.

Chelsea are one of five clubs to have won all three pre-1999 main European club competitions, and the only club to have won all three major European competitions twice. They are also the only London club to have won the Champions League and the Club World Cup.^[6] Domestically, the club has won six league titles, eight FA Cups, five League Cups, and four FA Community Shields. Internationally, they have won the UEFA Champions League, the UEFA Europa League, the UEFA Cup Winners’ Cup and the UEFA Super Cup twice each, and the FIFA Club World Cup once since their inception. In terms of overall trophies won, Chelsea are the fourth-most successful club in English football.

The club has rivalries with neighbouring teams Arsenal and Tottenham Hotspur, and a historic rivalry with Leeds United. In terms of club value, Chelsea is the eighth-most-valuable football club in the world (as of 2022^[update]), worth $3.10 billion, and is the eighth-highest-earning football club in the world.^[7][8]

History

Founding and early years

In 1904, Gus Mears acquired the Stamford Bridge athletics stadium in Fulham with the aim of turning it into a football ground. An offer to lease it to nearby Fulham F.C. was turned down, so Mears opted to found his own club to use the stadium. As there was already a team named Fulham in the borough, the name of the adjacent borough of Chelsea was chosen for the new club; names like Kensington FC, Stamford Bridge FC and London FC were also considered.^[9] Chelsea F.C. was founded on 10 March 1905 at The Rising Sun pub (now The Butcher’s Hook),^[1][10] opposite the present-day main entrance to the ground on Fulham Road, and were elected to the Football League shortly afterwards.

Chelsea won promotion to the First Division in their second season, and yo-yoed between the First and Second Divisions in their early years. They reached the 1915 FA Cup final, where they lost to Sheffield United at Old Trafford, and finished third in the First Division in 1920, the club’s best league campaign to that point.^[11] Chelsea had a reputation for signing star players^[12] and attracted large crowds. The club had the highest average attendance in English football in ten separate seasons^[13] including 1907–08,^[14] 1909–10,^[15] 1911–12,^[16] 1912–13,^[17] 1913–14^[18] and 1919–20.^[19][20] They were FA Cup semi-finalists in 1920 and 1932 and remained in the First Division throughout the 1930s, but success eluded the club in the inter-war years.

Modernisation and the first league championship

Former Arsenal and England centre-forward Ted Drake was appointed manager in 1952 and proceeded to modernise the club. He removed the club’s Chelsea pensioner crest, improved the youth set-up and training regime, rebuilt the side with shrewd signings from the lower divisions and amateur leagues, and led Chelsea to their first major trophy success – the League championship – in 1954–55. The following season saw UEFA create the European Champions’ Cup, but after objections from The Football League, Chelsea were persuaded to withdraw from the competition before it started.^[21][22] Chelsea failed to build on this success, and spent the remainder of the 1950s in mid-table. Drake was dismissed in 1961 and replaced by player-coach Tommy Docherty.

Docherty built a new team around the group of talented young players emerging from the club’s youth set-up, and Chelsea challenged for honours throughout the 1960s, enduring several near-misses. They were on course for a treble of League, FA Cup and League Cup going into the final stages of the 1964–65 season, winning the League Cup but faltering late on in the other two.^[23] In three seasons the side were beaten in three major semi-finals and were FA Cup runners-up. Under Docherty’s successor, Dave Sexton, Chelsea won the FA Cup in 1970, beating Leeds United 2–1 in a final replay. The following year, Chelsea took their first European honour, a UEFA Cup Winners’ Cup triumph, with another replayed win, this time over Real Madrid in Athens.

Redevelopment and financial crisis

The late 1970s through to the ’80s was a turbulent period for Chelsea. An ambitious redevelopment of Stamford Bridge threatened the financial stability of the club,^[24] star players were sold and the team were relegated. Further…