Chelsea India Supporters Club

It started off initially with discussion threads on the community related to Chelsea matches, tactics, transfers and a whole lot of banter, but slowly ideas started to trickle in and the club now expanded their reach out of the internet, inform of Match screenings at Pubs. It was an idea to incorporate the British culture here, albeit on a smaller level and so it began. Indian Chelsea fans dressed in their blues gathering outside pubs getting to know each other, glad to find their second family within the city.

It came to pass on the 5th of August 2006, we had the first screening organized at a local Mumbai pub attended by just four fans for the community shield game against Liverpool. Chelsea opened the scoring through Andriy Shevchenko, the clubs superstar signing along with Michael Ballack, something that thoroughly pleased the small group of blues gathered but went on to lose the game unfortunately. However, that wasn’t to dim the enthusiasm at all, not one bit. Infact, the sheer thrill of watching Chelsea with fellow fans spurred us on to organize further screenings against local London rivals and the other big three teams – Arsenal, Liverpool and Manchester United.

Activity in the online world and gradually the screenings started to pick up with the head count steadily rising. Just like in the stadiums around Europe and at our very own Stamford Bridge, people from a wide variety of backgrounds started to mingle, displaying the ability of the game to unite people and to talk about the club they truly loved – Chelsea FC.

As the numbers increased, so did ideas which subsequently led to the formation of -‘football meets on Sundays’. The fans couldn’t resist the chance to face off each other and also have a lot of fun along the way. The response as we like to put it was ‘ Jhakaas ‘ or simply brilliant! Meeting up on a cold Sunday morning after a long week was the perfect recipe to unwind, it makes it better when you know it is a completely relaxed game of football with fellow blues joining in!

These meets usually ended at a local café where the guys headed off for breakfast, beverages, banter and Chelsea FC talk, usually it was post match analysis of a game concluded on a Saturday afternoon or the pre match analysis for a game about to take place on a Sunday afternoon. The lads have been guilty of being loud and vocal on occasions, but the cafe owner thankfully happens to be a friendly guy. Oh we do pay him though, not that friendly! Looking back now, we had managed to conduct a total of over 140 football meets in three years.

We were aware that we had come a long way from being just another online group and all this was obviously immensely satisfying but there was always one question which bothered us, did Chelsea FC know we existed? We realized the importance of being recognized by the club, a formal recognition which would give us ample encouragement to continue this journey further along with a larger number of fellow Blues. Therefore, once we had 1000 members database we decided it was time to take it all a step further, after a few failed attempts to contact the club we were finally able to get through to the club with a little help from the North West Supporters and we had a favorable response, our fan club got officially recognized by Chelsea FC on the 14th of June 2009. It was a proud moment for us fans and we can’t thank the club enough.

This recognition meant a lot to all of us and provided us with a huge boost. The level of curiosity around the fan club increased which helped us expand our activities like the screenings and football meets to 5 other cities – Delhi, Bengaluru, Pune, Chennai and Kolkata, there was a genuine belief within the Chelsea fans across the country that they could help in coloring their cities blue.

The screenings in Mumbai by this time had reached a mammoth 80+ figure on average with the highest turnout being a 114, although the high point of these screenings, undoubtedly was when ex Chelsea players Gareth Hall and David Lee attended our screening for the game against Liverpool at Stamford Bridge on the 26th of October 2008. To meet and ask them about their experiences at the club was a dream come true for every single Blues fan present on that very special day. Delhi, Chennai and Kolkata all got off to extremely positive starts with 15 to 20 people being present at each game.

Wherever we are, all we need is a common cause to come together, a platform for like minded people to interact, is what Blues in Mumbai at that time and in the recent past, CFC supporters in Delhi, Bengaluru, Chennai, Pune and Kolkata have realized. Together the hope is to bring Indian Chelsea Supporters under one roof, support the team, forget about life’s troubles for a while and be CAREFREE! After all, we are the famous CFC…

Keep the Blue flag flying high !