If you are in London I highly recommend the Chelsea FC Stadium tour at Stamford Bridge, particularly since most of us can no longer afford to go to games; the cheapest tickets of this much loved team are around 100 pounds. Even if you are a non-football (soccer) fan its still worth going just to see the difference in the Chelsea Team's dressing room and with what they give their opponents to change in.
The stadium (Stamford Bidge) is the most centrally located of all the London football clubs and is easily accessible by the London Bus & the tube (Fulham tube station). The guided tour cost 15 pounds/person which also includes admission to the Chelsea Museum and takes about couple of hours.You start the tour at the Chelsea Museum and go through the press room, Home & Away changing rooms before entering the stadium through the players tunnel.
The team's changing rooms, were surprisingly basic. Each locker in the home changing room was hung with its owner’s shirt. Our tour guide opened the locker of "Ballack" and let us take a peak into it. The lockers are clustered by player's common language.
Next came the moment that was for me the highlight of the visit. You walk out of the players tunnel onto the field to the sound of the roaring crowd. (imagination of course, it was an empty stadium, but still...). I had wondered if a tour of an empty stadium (no crowd, no footballers) would feel a bit, well, empty. But it turned out to be more exciting than the game I had been to last year when Chelsea visited California as part of their US tour.
 |
| View from the players tunnel |
.JPG)
