Ask a Chelsea fan about their club and you'll get one of about five answers. Some still talk about Osgood and the King's Road. Some fell for it when Zola turned up in 1996. A lot of them grew up on the side that won everything after Mourinho arrived in 2004. Then there's the Conte and Tuchel lot, for whom Chelsea means Havertz in Porto. And there are kids for whom Cole Palmer scoring twice against PSG in the Club World Cup final, July 2025, is just what Chelsea do. Work out which one you're buying for first, because a shirt or a book that's perfect for one of them is a shrug from the next.
If they go to games
The stadium tour. The Chelsea FC Museum and Stadium Tour gets you into the home dressing room and down the tunnel, with the museum to finish. It's the best pick for the fan who lives miles from Fulham Road and has hardly been. Tours move around home fixtures, so check the dates before you book.
Membership. Most home tickets for the men's team go to members and season ticket holders, so a ticket on its own is hard to give as a surprise. A membership gets them into the queue for the season. Not much fun to unwrap, but they'll use it all season.
Chelsea Women tickets. I'd push this one harder than most guides do. They're the most successful side in the history of the WSL, tickets cost far less than for the men, and it makes a good first game for a younger fan. Pop a scarf in with the card and you're done.
If they read
Commitment is Didier Drogba's autobiography, out in 2015, and the one I'd buy first for anyone who still watches the header in Munich on their phone.
The Accidental Footballer is Pat Nevin's memoir, from 2021. Nevin was at Chelsea from 1983 to 1988, a winger who cared more about indie music than most footballers of his day did. It's the best written book here by a distance, and it suits the older fan who stood on the Shed when the club was skint.
Rick Glanvill's Chelsea FC: The Official Biography is the one for someone who wants the whole story from 1905 onwards.
Frank Lampard's Totally Frank came out in 2006, so it stops well short of Munich. Fine for a Lampard obsessive.
Something to hold or hang up
A programme. This is my favourite on the list, and the best version is the programme from their first ever game. Ask a parent or the mate who took them. Who was it against, roughly what year, were they in the Shed or the West Stand? Even a half memory like "a cold night, we lost to Forest" is enough to narrow it to a season, and then you're hunting second-hand. Old Chelsea programmes from the seventies and eighties aren't hard to find, and if the exact game won't turn up, one from the same season still lands. If you'd rather go big, get a final instead: 1997 against Middlesbrough, when Di Matteo scored inside a minute, or Stockholm 1998, when Zola came off the bench and scored the winner against Stuttgart almost straight away, or Munich, or Porto. Buy from sellers who photograph the real item, because reprints are everywhere.
A retro shirt. The Coors Umbro shirt is the one for the 1997 lot. For Munich it's the Samsung adidas, and for Porto, the Three Nike shirt Havertz was wearing when he scored the only goal against Manchester City. An older fan raised on Kerry Dixon will want something mid-eighties, and Dixon is still third on the club's all-time scoring list, behind Lampard and Bobby Tambling.
Blue Is the Colour on vinyl. The squad recorded it in 1972, before the League Cup final against Stoke, and it went into the top five. Chelsea lost the final 2-1. The song outlived it. A second-hand single doesn't cost much and looks right in a record frame.
A photo of the old Bridge. Anyone who went before the rebuild in the nineties remembers the dog track round the pitch and the open terrace at the Shed End, getting rained on and squinting at the far goal. An old print of that view will mean more to them than any aerial shot of the new ground.
A signed shirt or photo. Only with a certificate and a seller you can trace.
Under £50, by the way, you're looking at any of the books, the Blue Is the Colour single, an old programme or Chelsea Women tickets.
A framed Chelsea XI
Munich is the one I'd frame. With Terry, Ivanović, Ramires and Meireles all suspended, Di Matteo started Čech; Bosingwa, Cahill, David Luiz, Ashley Cole; Mikel, Lampard; Kalou, Mata, Ryan Bertrand; Drogba. Bertrand was making his Champions League debut. Mata took the corner for Drogba's equaliser in the 88th minute, Čech saved Robben's penalty in extra time, and Drogba scored the last kick of the shootout. I'd put 19 May 2012 along the bottom.
Unless they're over sixty. Then skip Munich and do the 1970 FA Cup final replay side that beat Leeds at Old Trafford: Bonetti in goal, Ron Harris, Eddie McCreadie, John Dempsey, David Webb, John Hollins, Charlie Cooke, Tommy Baldwin, Peter Houseman, Ian Hutchinson and Osgood up top, with Osgood's diving header to force extra time and Webb's winner. Alan Hudson was injured and missed both games. They'll tell you that team was better than the 2012 one, and they'll be half right.
For younger fans I'd go the other way and argue for Porto over Munich. They actually watched it, most of them, and Munich they only know from the clips.
You can build any of these in our team builder, or their Sunday league side in blue if that's the team that matters. Pick the players, formation, kit, pitch, title and message, and we email a proof before anything is printed, so leave a couple of weeks. It's £99 for 12x16 in or £149 for 18x24 in, black or white frame, free UK delivery. There are ready-made Chelsea prints too, including the 2021 Champions League final side and the 2009-10 double winners, from £69.