The Blues will be based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania throughout the group stage of the Club World Cup, with the city’s Lincoln Financial Field hosting two of our matches in the tournament.

After opening the campaign against LAFC in Atlanta, we will be back in Philadelphia to face Brazilian league leaders Flamengo next Friday evening and then Esperance de Tunis (ES Tunis) – winners of eight of the last nine Tunisian league titles – in the early hours of Wednesday 25 June BST.

We return to Philadelphia 20 years after our first visit, with one win and one loss at Lincoln Financial Field so far…

Chelsea 2-3 Milan, 2 August 2004

New Chelsea head coach Jose Mourinho took his team to the USA for his first pre-season in the Blues dugout. It was the start of a momentous period for the club, as we ended the 2004/05 campaign by claiming our first Premier League title and ending our 50-year wait to be crowned champions of England for the second time.

Our third game of the US tour saw us at Lincoln Financial Field to take on an AC Milan side who had just won their own domestic title and lifted the UEFA Champions League trophy the previous year - led by Carlo Ancelotti, who would later manage Chelsea to our first domestic Double.

It was our toughest challenge of pre-season and ultimately resulted in our only defeat. That was despite a promising start when we took the lead twice in the first half, through Eidur Gudjohnsen and then Didier Drogba, either side of Cafu’s equaliser.

Unfortunately, Milan’s pedigree showed after the break, as Alessandro Costacurta levelled again before future Blues striker Andriy Shevchenko netted an 87th-minute winner, but it was Chelsea who would be celebrating come the end of a historic season.

Chelsea 4-3 Brighton, 22 July 2023

The opening game of the inaugural Premier League Summer Series was played at Lincoln Financial Field and featured Chelsea facing Brighton & Hove Albion in an all-English affair Stateside.

The 65,000 supporters attending the game were in for a real treat, as a seven-goal thriller ended in Chelsea’s favour. A relatively subdued first half gave little clue that the floodgates would open, as Christopher Nkunku equalised after Danny Welbeck’s Brighton opener to make it 1-1 at the break.

We pulled ahead for the first time through Mykhailo Mudryk just after the hour mark and, despite the drama, we would not surrender our lead. Two goals in the space of three minutes by Conor Gallagher and Nicolas Jackson, the latter netting in a Chelsea shirt for the first time, gave us what seemed like a comfortable lead.

However, following widespread changes, Brighton hit back twice to make it a nervier finish than it should have been. We held on for a 4-3 victory though, with new striker Jackson – wearing the unfamiliar No.43 shirt for this tour – the decisive player after getting a goal and two assists, despite only featuring for the final half-an-hour.