A west London football club, founded in 1905, that plays at Stamford Bridge and trains at Cobham in Surrey, with a community charity, the Chelsea FC Foundation.
Chelsea is a professional football club in west London. It plays at Stamford Bridge, which opened in 1877 as an athletics venue and was bought in 1904 by Gus Mears, who turned it into a football ground. The stadium's listed capacity is around 40,000. The ground is owned by Chelsea Pitch Owners, a non-profit company in which supporters are shareholders, which was set up to stop the stadium being sold to developers. The club trains at Cobham in Surrey, where it moved in 2004 and finished building in 2007. It fields men's and women's teams.
The club was founded on 10 March 1905 at The Rising Sun pub, near Stamford Bridge. It took the name Chelsea because Fulham was already in use in the area. It won its first top-flight title in 1955, its first Premier League title in 2004-05 and its first Champions League in 2012. We could not read a mission statement for the club itself. For the charity, the Chelsea FC Foundation says its purpose is "where pride in our club becomes impact in our community", and that it uses the club's resources and expertise to tackle local issues and create opportunities near the club.
The club is based in West London, with the registered address of the Foundation at Stamford Bridge on Fulham Road, London SW6. The Foundation also appears in connection with Kingsmeadow, a ground in south-west London, and a degree partnership with St Mary's University, announced in 2015. It was founded in 2010, is a registered charity (number 1129723) and works to a 2025-2030 strategy built around three pillars: wellbeing, community and futures. It makes grants, runs partner initiatives and supports players through the Chelsea Players' Trust.
On people and culture, the Foundation's chief executive, Laura Cordingley, has led it since August 2024. Its board is chaired by Lord Daniel Finkelstein and includes trustees such as Millie Bright and Piara Power. The Foundation's page does not list formal values but talks about pride, impact, community, passion, energy and excellence. A detail from the club's history: during the Covid-19 pandemic it chose not to furlough its non-matchday staff, according to Wikipedia. These are descriptions from the organisation and from a general reference page, not independent checks.
The Foundation and the club employ many kinds of people. The Foundation's work in wellbeing, community and futures needs youth workers, coaches, project officers and people who help others find careers. On the club side there are academy and sport science teams, matchday and stadium staff, and the commercial, media, finance and people teams that support them. We found no headcount for either. If you want to work in football without being a player, both the club and the Foundation websites are good places to start.
Website: www.chelseafc.com
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