Chelsea play home fixtures at Stamford Bridge, London

Chelsea in a recent match against Tottenham Hotspur

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Chelsea

Chelsea Football Club (also known as The Blues or previously as The Pensioners), founded in 1905, are an English Premier League football team. The club's home ground is the 42,360 capacity Stamford Bridge football ground in Fulham, West London, where they have played since foundation. more...

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Despite their name, the club is based just outside the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, in the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham. It is on the Fulham Road, which runs between Fulham and Chelsea. In 2003, the club were bought by Russian oil tycoon, Roman Abramovich.

Chelsea have spent most of their history in the top tier of English football, and have had two broad periods of success: first during the 1960s and early 1970s, and then again from the late 1990s to the present day. In total, they have won three league titles, three FA Cups, three League Cups and two UEFA Cup Winners' Cups. During the 2005-06 season, they became Premier League champions for the second consecutive year.

Stamford Bridge

Chelsea have only ever had one home ground, Stamford Bridge, where they have played since foundation. It was officially opened on 28 April 1877. For the first 28 years of its existence it was used almost exclusively by the London Athletic Club as an arena for athletics meetings and not at all for football. In 1904 the ground was acquired by H A (Gus) Mears and his brother, J T Mears, who had previously acquired additional land (formerly a large market garden) with the aim of staging football matches on the now 12.5 acre (51,000 m²) site. The Mears family remained the owners of the ground (and subsequently the Club) until the 1970s.

Stamford Bridge was designed for the Mears family by the noted football architect Archibald Leitch. They offered the stadium to Fulham Football Club, but the offer was turned down. As a consequence, the owners decided to form their own football club to occupy their new ground. Most football clubs were founded first, and then sought grounds in which to play, but Chelsea were founded for Stamford Bridge. Since there was already a football club named Fulham in the borough, the founders decided to adopt the name of the adjacent borough of Chelsea for the new club, having rejected names such as Kensington FC, Stamford Bridge FC and London FC.

Starting with an open bowl-like design and one covered terrace, Stamford Bridge had an original capacity of around 100,000. The early 1930s saw the construction of a terrace on the southern part of the ground with a roof that covered around 1/5th of the stand. It eventually became known as the \"Shed end\", the home of Chelsea's most loyal and vocal supporters, and particularly came into its own during the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. The exact origins of the name are unclear, but the fact that the roof looked like a corrugated iron shed roof played a part.