Chelsea exists because Fulham turned down a stadium lease in 1904
In 1904 the businessman Gus Mears bought the Stamford Bridge athletics ground and offered to lease it to Fulham, the local football club. Fulham said no. So Mears founded his own team in a pub across the road, borrowing the name of the next borough over because Fulham was already taken. That team became Chelsea.
The club was formed on 10 March 1905 at the Rising Sun pub on Fulham Road, after names such as Kensington and London were considered and dropped. It entered the Football League almost immediately and won promotion in its second season. Early Chelsea loved star signings and pulled enormous crowds, topping the country's attendance figures in ten separate seasons, but trophies were scarce. The first major one came only in 1955, when the former Arsenal striker Ted Drake, who had modernised everything from training to the club crest, delivered the league title.
The late 1970s and 1980s were grim. An ambitious rebuild of Stamford Bridge strained the finances, stars were sold, the team went down and hooliganism scarred the decade. Ken Bates bought the club for a pound in 1982 and, after a long legal fight, reunited it with its ground in 1992.
In June 2003 Bates sold to the Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich for £60 million, and spending on a new scale followed. Under José Mourinho, Chelsea won their first Premier League title in 2004–05 and retained it the next season. Carlo Ancelotti's side of 2009–10 won the league and FA Cup double and became the first English top-flight team since 1963 to hit 100 league goals. Two years later, Roberto Di Matteo's team beat Bayern Munich on penalties to lift the Champions League, a first for a London club.
They won it again in 2021. A Conference League triumph in 2025 then completed a unique set: no other club had collected every main UEFA men's trophy. Along the way they swapped their original light blue shirts for royal blue, earning the nickname the Blues, and adopted the anthem Blue Is the Colour.
Source: Chelsea F.C.
