Chelsea Football Club’s new museum, which opened on Monday, has been given the thumbs up by Britain’s premier guide to the country’s sports museums, stadium tours and sporting visitor attractions – sportcloseup.co.uk.

The website describes the museum, which has taken over two years to build, as ‘excellent’ and the ‘first-rate’ attraction that a club with Chelsea’s history and financial resources should have. Visitor numbers are forecast to top 200,000 in year one – significantly up on the old museum, which opened in 2005.

Sportcloseup highlights innovations at the museum, including a new cinema, rotating display of stars’ shirts, and the use of a 19th century special effects technique known as Pepper’s Ghost. This creates the illusion of moving and speaking figures behind glass appearing to be in 3-D. The technique is also used at Wimbledon and Old Trafford, bringing to life John McEnroe and Sir Alex Ferguson; at Chelsea it is Ron ‘Chopper’ Harris and Marcel Desailly.

Chelsea’s museum is also praised for its adidas Shooting Gallery, offering youngsters expert coaching tips on video, a reaction-testing gadget and many more interactive features than the old museum. But the sportcloseup website expresses surprise that there is not more on Chelsea’s many high-profile managers.

sportcloseup.co.uk reviews 50 visitor attractions charting the history of football, cricket, rugby, tennis, golf, racing, motor racing, motorcycling, speedway, badminton, cycling, fencing, rowing, shooting and snooker. And it lists more than 50 sports stadiums, and horse and motor racing facilities that can be toured, as well as the London 2012 Olympic Park.

- Continued - The website provides reviews, essential facts for visitors, maps, links, photographs, travel and weather information, plus icons rating attractions for their value-for-money and appeal to younger visitors. A Twitter feed and e-newsletter provide an easy way to stay in touch with the latest on the UK’s many sporting visitor attractions.

Apart from museums and tours, there is also coverage of places that played a big part in the development of sport, like Much Wenlock in Shropshire, one of the inspirations for the modern Olympics, and the Oxford track where the first sub-Four Minute Mile was run in 1954.

Sportcloseup’s editor, John Evans, said: “The sportcloseup website, for the first time online or in print, lists all our visitor attractions that celebrate sport, provides impartial reviews and helps fans of sport and our history to plan visits. It will tap into – and hopefully fuel - unprecedented interest in Britain’s role in creating sport as we know it today and the stadiums where it is played in the 21st Century.

“This is going to be an extraordinary decade of sport in the UK, the country where so many of the world’s top sports were invented, had their first rules written down, or were popularised. It’s great that Chelsea have invested in a new and exciting museum in time for London 2012 and to cope with increased fascination in our sporting heritage.”