Chelsea Football Club are an English professional football club based in fulham, London. Founded in 1905, they compete in the premier league, the top division of English football. Chelsea are among englands most successful clubs; they have been league champions six times, and won over thirty competitive honours – including six European trophies. Their home ground is stampford bridge.

Chelsea won their first major honour, the league championship, in 1955. They won the Fa cup for the first time in 1970 and their first European honour, the UEFA CUP winners cup, in 1971. After a period of decline in the late 1970s and 1980s, the club enjoyed a revival in the 1990s and had more success in cup competitions. The past two decades have been the most successful in Chelsea’s history: they won five of their six league titles and the UEFA champions league during this period. Chelsea are one of five clubs to have won all three of UEFA’s main club competitions, and the only London club to have won the Champions League.

Chelsea’s home kit colours are royal blue shirts and shorts with white socks. The club’s crest features a ceremonial lion rampant regardant holding a staff. The club have rivalries with neighbouring teams Arsenal and Tottenham Hotspur, and a historic rivalry with Leeds united. Based on attendance figures, the club have the sixth-largest fanbase in England. In terms of club value, Chelsea are the sixth most valuable football club in the world, worth £2.13 billion ($2.576 billion), and are the eighth highest earning football club in the world, with earnings of over €428 million in the 2017–18 season. Since 2003, Chelsea have been owned by Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich.

Colours

Chelsea have always worn blue shirts, although they originally used the paler eton blue, which was taken from the racing colours of then club president, Earl Cadogan, and was worn with white shorts and dark blue or black socks. The light blue shirts were replaced by a royal blue version in around 1912. In the 1960s Chelsea manager Tommy Docherty changed the kit again, switching to blue shorts (which have remained ever since) and white socks, believing it made the club’s colours more modern and distinctive, since no other major side used that combination; this kit was first worn during the 1964–65 season. Since then Chelsea have always worn white socks with their home kit apart from a short spell from 1985 to 1992, when blue socks were reintroduced.

Chelsea’s away colours are usually all yellow or all white with blue trim. More recently, the club have had a number of black or dark blue away kits which alternate every year. As with most teams, they have also had some more unusual ones. At Docherty’s behest, in the 1966 FA Cup semi-final they wore blue and black stripes, based on Inter Milan‘s kit. In the mid-1970s, the away strip was a red, white and green kit inspired by the Hungarian national side of the 1950s. Other memorable away kits include an all jade strip worn from 1986–89, red and white diamonds from 1990–92, graphite and tangerine from 1994–96, and luminous yellow from 2007–08. The graphite and tangerine strip has appeared in lists of the worst football kits ever.

Chelsea Women

Chelsea also operate a women’s football team, Chelsea Football Club Women, formerly known as Chelsea Ladies. They have been affiliated to the men’s team since 2004 and are part of the club’s Community Development programme. They play their home games at Kingsmeadow, the home ground of the EFL League One club AFC Wimbledon. The club were promoted to the Premier Division for the first time in 2005 as Southern Division champions and won the Surrey County Cup nine times between 2003 and 2013. In 2010 Chelsea Ladies were one of the eight founder members of the FA Women’s Super League. In 2015, Chelsea Ladies won the FA Women’s Cup for the first time, beating Notts County Ladies at Wembley Stadium, and a month later clinched their first FA WSL title to complete a league and cup double. In 2018 they won a second league and FA Cup double. John Terry, former captain of the Chelsea men’s team, is the President of Chelsea Women.