Chelsea tickets

Chelsea Football Club was founded in 1905 and has played at Stamford Bridge from the start. Most English clubs were formed first and found a ground later. Chelsea worked the other way round, created specifically to fill a stadium that had stood in Fulham since 1877 as an athletics venue.

The club joined the Football League shortly after and settled into the top division, but the trophies came in bursts rather than steadily. The first English league title arrived in 1955, then a long wait, then a run of success in the twenty-first century that turned Chelsea into one of the most recognised names of the Premier League era.

The European breakthrough came in 2012, when the club won the Champions League and joined the small group of English sides to have lifted it. That period was shaped by Frank Lampard, still the club's leading goal scorer, and by Didier Drogba, whose goals decided several of the finals that defined the era.

Stamford Bridge has been rebuilt in stages around its original footprint, which is why it feels tighter than newer grounds of similar size. It holds 40,341 across four stands: Matthew Harding and the Shed End behind the goals, with the East and West Stands along the sidelines.