Our pre-season schedule sees Bayer Leverkusen and AC Milan coming to west London for the VisitMalta Weekender. We face the Germans at the Bridge first, at 7pm on Friday 8 August, before taking on Serie A visitors on Sunday 10 August, with kick-off at 3pm.

Tickets are now on general sale for both of those friendlies and can be purchased by clicking on the button below.

Before the second of those matches brings the curtain down on our pre-season, a week before the competitive action gets under way in the Premier League, we recall some of the historical links between Chelsea and AC Milan.

We’ve met before

In addition to meeting seven times in friendly matches since 1997, mostly played in the USA, Chelsea have faced AC Milan in seven competitive games, including three previous contests at Stamford Bridge.

The first was way back in 1966, an epic third-round tie in the Fairs Cup – predecessor of the UEFA Europa League. It was only our second-ever European campaign, against a side who had been crowned European champions less than three years earlier.

Both sides won their home leg 2-1, as George Graham netted for the Blues in both games before Peter Osgood’s winner at the Bridge. In the days before penalty shootouts, a third game was played as a tiebreaker, held at Milan’s San Siro.

Barry Bridges gave us an early lead, but Giuliano Fortunato’s 90th-minute equaliser meant there was still nothing to choose between the sides. Incredibly, that meant the tie was decided by the toss of a coin, which Chelsea captain Ron Harris won to send us through.

Since then, we have twice been paired together in the UEFA Champions League group stage. The first was on our Champions League debut and our first-ever game in the competition proper, ending in a respectable 0-0 draw. The 1-1 in the return match at the San Siro, and especially Dennis Wise’s equalising goal, felt like a milestone result for Chelsea as we arrived on the continent’s biggest stage, and is still sung about at the Bridge to this day.

Things were more one-sided when we met again in the 2022/23 group stage. At the Bridge, Wesley Fofana got his first goal for the Blues before Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang and Reece James found the net to give us a comfortable 3-0 win. In Italy, former Chelsea defender Fikayo Tomori was sent off and Jorginho converted the penalty, combined with another Aubameyang goal against his own ex-club, in a 2-0 victory.

Mutual friends

There have been a number of players who represented both Chelsea and Milan during their careers, beginning with two of the finest talents ever to have emerged from the Blues’ youth set-up. The prolific Jimmy Greaves scored 132 goals in 169 games before leaving us for the San Siro in 1961 – heavily influenced by the wage cap enforced in England at the time – while our former teenage captain Ray Wilkins would go on to spend three years with the Rossoneri at the peak of his career.

That has been repeated in recent years, with Chelsea Academy graduates Ruben Loftus-Cheek and Tomori both playing for Milan these days, with another Tammy Abraham on loan last season, and they featured alongside former Blues team-mates Olivier Giroud and Christian Pulisic at the San Siro.

Former Milan players had a huge influence on the nineties revolution at Stamford Bridge, as Chelsea became a more modern and continental club. Ruud Gullit was a catalyst for that as both player and later manager, while Marcel Desailly’s arrival in defence also played a big part, where alongside his excellent performances on the pitch, he mentored a young John Terry.

Another three of AC Milan’s most successful foreign players have also moved to Chelsea. George Weah and Andriy Shevchenko both won the Ballon d’Or for their performances up front for the Rossoneri, but couldn’t hit the same heights in Blue. However, the evergreen Thiago Silva was a crucial figure as Chelsea won the Champions League and FIFA Club World Cup in 2021 and 2022.

You look familiar

Chelsea’s 2021 Champions League winners Tomori, Loftus-Cheek and Pulisic all still play their football for Milan and are sure to get a warm welcome back to the Bridge at the upcoming friendly game, especially Tomori and Loftus-Cheek, who came through our Academy at Cobham.

They are joined in the Rossoneri ranks by new signing Pervis Estupinan, who has signed for Milan from Brighton & Hove Albion after three years representing the Seagulls in the Premier League.

In the dugout

Only one man has managed both Chelsea and AC Milan, but he remains a hugely popular figure among supporters at both the Bridge and San Siro. Carlo Ancelotti became part of a select group to have won the Champions League as a player and a manager with the same club, when he returned to Milan as head coach to add two more European crowns to the pair he claimed in their midfield.

In 2009, he swapped the San Siro for Stamford Bridge. A brilliant first season saw his Blues team smash records while winning our first-ever domestic Double, by following Premier League triumph with a 1-0 win over Portsmouth in the FA Cup final.

Watch the Blues back at Stamford Bridge when we take on Bayer Leverkusen and AC Milan in the VisitMalta Weekender! Click here for tickets.