Posted August 20, 2024Aug 20 Hello - I'm an American (Philly guy) living in Stockholm, Sweden. My first visit to Stamford Bridge was in '93. At that point in time, I used to travel with work from Wash DC to Worthing for work about once every four months or so. To make the flights cheaper my company had me stay over Saturday night in London before flying back. On one of those visits, I asked my colleague who was traveling with me if he wanted to see a soccer (football game). He said sure and when we looked in the papers on Sun morning we discovered that the only club at home that day was Chelsea. We decided to try our luck and took the tube down to the area and started to walk along with everyone else toward the stadium. We quickly found some tickets and bought a scarf (we had no idea what colors the two teams wore but we thought best to wear something showing we supported the home team 🙂 ). A visit to a roaring pub for pre-game was followed by the walk with a few thousand into the stadium, think the capacity was 23k back then if I remember correctly. Along the way, the Wolves fan buses came down the street with a lot of commotion and vulgar arm waving on the street and up in the coaches. This was an FA Cup quarter final game. We sat somewhere on the long side of the pitch like a sardine in the old Stamford Bridge and it was electric. Chelsea won 1-0 on a goal by Gavin Peacock sending Chelsea to Wembley for the semi-finals. My moment of truth came in the loo just after the match when I witnessed an old geez wimpering of joy with tears in his eyes saying to everyone "lads, I've waited over 20 years and we are finally going back to Wembley". That was the moment I became a fan for life. Along the way during the subsequent years I moved to Europe and have seen games at The Bridge on a few different occasions including a derby win vs Spurs with my daughter. I was also lucky enough to get really good midfield seats down near the pitch in Stockholm for the '98 Cup Final vs. Stuttgart. Wise victoriously held the cup right in front of me when the team gathered for the celebration pictures. I spent the glorious summer night in downtown Stockholm with 15k Chelsea fans singing until the sun game up. Glad to have found this place and look forward to chatting about the team.
August 21, 2024Aug 21 Author 12 hours ago, Munkunku said: Where were you when we were sh*t? Oh sorry that’s right now isn’t it. Just that first year or so before the team started the pre-Roman rise. Guess I got in just the last minute before the good times. I'd have to say we've been pretty darn good ever since though the last couple years have been wanting of course.
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