Everton v Chelsea

A Methodist cricket club's search for a winter pastime quietly gave birth to one of English football's great institutions.

St Domingo's Methodist Church in the Everton district of Liverpool formed a cricket club in 1878, adding football as a winter pursuit. The following year, in 1879, the club formally adopted the name Everton Football Club, taking its identity from the neighbourhood. They played on open land in Stanley Park before settling at Anfield in 1884, a ground they would eventually lose to a landlord dispute that birthed Liverpool FC.

Goodison Park did not merely house a champion club; it rewrote what a football ground could be.

After a bitter rent dispute with Anfield's landlord John Houlding, Everton decamped across Stanley Park to a new ground on Mere Green Field, soon christened Goodison Park. It became the first major purpose-built football ground in England. The club had already won the Football League title in 1891, and the move to Goodison cemented their status as one of the country's leading clubs.

A football club born not from passion, but from a landlord's refusal to rent his ground.

On 10 March 1905, Chelsea Football Club was founded at The Rising Sun pub near Stamford Bridge. Businessman Gus Mears had acquired the athletics ground and, after failing to lease it to Fulham FC, decided to create his own club. Chelsea were elected directly into the Football League Second Division and played their first competitive match in September 1905. The two clubs first met in league competition in 1907, after Chelsea earned promotion to the First Division.

Sixty league goals in a single season; Dean's record from 1927-28 has stood for nearly a century and shows no sign of falling.

Everton's golden age of the late 1920s and 1930s produced league titles in 1928 and 1932, plus the 1933 FA Cup. The era was defined by Dixie Dean, whose 60 league goals in the 1927-28 season remains an English top-flight record that will almost certainly never be broken. Chelsea, meanwhile, spent much of this period as a glamorous but inconsistent side, yo-yoing between divisions and earning the nickname 'the music hall club' for their entertaining unpredictability.

Three trophies between them across 1970 and 1971; Chelsea and Everton arrived at this fixture as genuine rivals for everything.

Everton won the league championship in 1970 under Harry Catterick, with a side built around Alan Ball, Howard Kendall, and Colin Harvey. Chelsea had won the FA Cup in 1970 and followed it with the European Cup Winners' Cup in 1971. The fixture between the two sides during this period carried real weight, with both clubs fielding squads packed with internationals and genuine title ambition.

Thirteen points clear and a European trophy; only Heysel stopped Kendall's side rewriting the continent's history.

The 1984-85 season was the finest in Everton's history. Howard Kendall's side won the First Division title by 13 points and lifted the European Cup Winners' Cup, beating Rapid Vienna 3-1 in the final in Rotterdam. They also reached the FA Cup final, losing to Manchester United. Players like Neville Southall, Peter Reid, and Andy Gray formed a side that could have dominated European football, had the Heysel disaster not led to the ban on English clubs from continental competition.

Fifteen goals conceded across an entire title-winning campaign; Mourinho's Chelsea didn't just win the league, they barely broke sweat doing it.

Roman Abramovich's 2003 takeover of Chelsea changed the landscape of English football. Under José Mourinho, Chelsea won back-to-back Premier League titles in 2005 and 2006, conceding just 15 goals in the first of those campaigns. Everton, under David Moyes, had qualified for the Champions League in 2005 and were competing admirably on a fraction of Chelsea's budget. The fixture became a study in contrasts: new money versus old tradition, Stamford Bridge glitz against Goodison grit.

Saha had the ball in the net before most of the 89,391 crowd had found their seats; 25 seconds, and FA Cup final history was already made.

The 2009 FA Cup final brought the two clubs together on the biggest domestic stage. Chelsea won 2-1, with Didier Drogba and Frank Lampard scoring, while Louis Saha's goal after just 25 seconds remains the fastest in FA Cup final history. It was a bittersweet afternoon for Everton, who had beaten Manchester United in the semi-final on penalties and arrived at Wembley with genuine belief. The match drew an attendance of 89,391.

132 years of Goodison memories, then a fresh start on the Liverpool waterfront.

After 132 years at Goodison Park, Everton moved to their new 52,888-capacity stadium at Bramley-Moore Dock on Liverpool's waterfront in 2025. The ground, now known as the Hill Dickinson Stadium, is a striking brick-clad structure that nods to the city's maritime heritage. Chelsea's visit to the new ground adds a fresh dimension to a fixture that has been played well over 200 times. For hospitality guests, the waterfront setting and modern facilities represent a significant step up from Goodison's characterful but ageing stands.