The Blues brought up our century at home in Europe’s top club competition in style, as Pedro Neto and Alejandro Garnacho forced Benfica defender Richard Rios into putting the ball in his own net. That proved to be the only goal of the game, giving us our 62nd victory from 100 home games in the tournament.

The very first Chelsea fixture in the Champions League was also played at Stamford Bridge, when we made our long-awaited bow among the European elite a little over 26 years ago in August 1999.

The Blues were a club on the rise under manager Gianluca Vialli – a Champions League winner as Juventus captain just three years earlier – and had secured a spot in the Champions League for the very first time by finishing third in the 1998/99 Premier League table, even if we missed out on the title by four points.

Some high-profile ties against the likes of AC Milan, Galatasaray and Barcelona awaited, but first we had to finish the job of reaching the competition proper, by progressing through the preliminary stages. We entered in the final qualifying round, just one win away from the group stages.

The opponents for that game weren’t quite as illustrious as those who were to come, when we took on Latvian league winners Skonto Riga in a two-legged tie – although they had famously led Barcelona 2-0 at the Nou Camp in the competition two years earlier. As strange as it may seem these days, of the two sides Chelsea and Skonto, it was the latter who possessed by far the more Champions League experience going into the game.

Perhaps crucially, the opening match – our first ever in the Champions League – was to be played at Stamford Bridge, allowing the Blues fans to roar on their team in large numbers, something Vialli encouraged in his notes in the matchday programme.

‘Tonight is a great occasion to come to Stamford Bridge and celebrate, to be happy and enthusiastic,’ the Italian wrote.

‘For the first time in the history of this club we are playing in the Champions League. It is only a qualifying match, so we have to finish the job we started last season, going through and earning the right to play in the real Champions League next month. That would be fantastic, wouldn’t it!

‘Skonto Riga is a team that has experience in European competitions. They’ve played in the past teams like Barcelona, Inter Milan, Spartak Moscow and Aberdeen.

‘Everybody says that Chelsea on paper is stronger than them. I don’t feel like denying that. But we’ve got to play at our best to go through, respecting Skonto Riga, thinking it’s going to be a tough, tight match. Let’s make history, guys.’

Although Skonto Riga may not have captured the public’s imagination the way a top-tier European heavyweight would have done, the very fact of Chelsea competing at the highest level was enough to build excitement, which was summed up best by club captain and long-time Blues stalwart Dennis Wise.

‘Tonight is one of the most important games in my life,’ he proclaimed on the eve of the Latvians’ visit to west London. ‘Tonight, together with the second leg in a fortnight, can give us the right to play in the same league as Barcelona, AC Milan, Bayern Munich, Real Madrid, Lazio, Marseille, and even Manchester United and Arsenal later on.

‘I love Europe. If I had to pick my most satisfying Chelsea achievement it would be winning the Cup Winners’ Cup. We showed we could live with some of the best in Europe then. What we have the chance to do now is take on the very best in Europe. But we have to beat Skonto first.

‘We’re okay. But we’ve got to win. And tonight, those of you who are here have got to make Skonto Riga wish that they weren’t.’

By the final whistle, that wish had been fulfilled and our progress to the latter stages all but secured, as Skonto were sent home with their tails between their legs after a heavy defeat at the Bridge.

However, Vialli was also proven correct in his assessment that we would be made to work hard for the win, requiring a long night’s toil before the floodgates finally opened in SW6.

That was despite Skonto being reduced to 10 men in the first half, when Andrejs Tereskinas was shown a straight red card for senselessly kicking out at Frank Leboeuf while waiting for a corner to be taken.

Even with our numerical advantage, the visitors proved to be stubborn opponents, and when we did breach their packed defence, it was only to be denied by the goalkeeper. That continued for 75 minutes, before we finally broke through and effectively settled the tie in a ruthless eight-minute spell.

It started when Tore Andre Flo brought down a Wise cross to allow Celestine Babayaro to fire us into the lead, and write his name in the history books as the scorer of Chelsea’s first-ever Champions League goal.

Within a minute it was 2-0, when Gustavo Poyet curled in from the edge of the box. The Blues were even given some short-lived hope that our big new signing Chris Sutton – who had arrived from Blackburn Rovers that summer for a record fee – could be the striker to fire us to bigger and better things, when he completed a 3-0 victory by netting his first goal for the club.

That was a healthy lead to take with us to the second leg in Riga, where a professional if unspectacular performance finished the job with a 0-0 draw. That meant we progressed to the Champions League proper thanks to a winning start to life in the competition at Stamford Bridge.

It had been a long time coming, but Chelsea's status as a member of the European elite was finally secured.