Boca Juniors From Argentina: A South American Giant

No one can deny that Boca Juniors is one of the best soccer teams on the planet. With 18 international and 46 national titles, it's one of the most successful clubs.

Club Atlético Boca Juniors is one of the most important soccer teams in Argentina. Founded in 1905 in the La Boca neighborhood, it’s the second club with the most official titles in the world. We’ll tell you all about the Xeneize in the following article.

Foundation and beginning of Boca Juniors

The club was founded in April 1905, a decade in which around 300 soccer teams originated in Argentina. Six teenagers, children of Italian immigrants -mostly Genoese- who lived in the La Boca neighborhood decided to create a club to meet after school.

They never imagined that they’d end up accomplishing their dreams. And not only that, but the club would also become one of the most prestigious soccer teams in the world. In their opening game, they won 4 – 0. It was easy to foresee the future that awaited them.

The next step was to decide on the jersey they’d wear. The initial colors were white with fine black strips, but fate would lead them to change the colors in 1907. The then president of the club said that the team would adopt the colors of the flag of the first ship they saw in the port (La Boca is a port neighborhood). The ship turned out to be Swedish and, therefore, chose the colors blue and yellow.

A successful beginning

The Boca went on a European tour in 1925 as a representative of the Argentine Soccer Association. It was the first South American team to compete in the ‘old continent’. They won 15 games, lost three and tied one.

With the beginning of professionalism in 1931 and until 1944, Boca Juniors won six titles at the hands of one of the club’s idols: Francisco ‘Pancho’ Varallo. In 1934 and 1935, the team achieved its first two-time championship (they did this again in 1943 and 1944).

The decade of the sixties brought along a Copa Libertadores de América, a National Tournament, and an Argentina Cup. With the arrival of Toto Lorenzo as a coach in 1976, Boca became a two-time national champion again. A year later, they won the Intercontinental Cup. And in 1978 they won another Copa Libertadores.

During the eighties they went through another rough patch, only winning a single title in eight years. Even though they had Diego Maradona himself in the squad! They went on to achieve local titles during the nineties as well but quite spaced apart from each other.

The new millennium, many titles

Although Boca Juniors was always one of the teams with the most titles in the First Division tournament, the truth is that this number has increased significantly in recent years. We can say that the arrival of coach Carlos Bianchi and then Alfio Basile were certainly decisive events that played a huge role in those achievements.

In the first decade of the 2000s, Boca won five First Division titles (2000, 2003, 2005, 2006 and 2008), two Intercontinental Cups (2000 and 2003), four Copa Libertadores de América titles (2000, 2001, 2003 and 2007), two Copa Sudamericana titles (2004 and 2005) and three Recopa Sudamericana titles (2005, 2006 and 2008).

Boca Juniors’ records and statistics

Among idols and prominent figures in the history of Boca Juniors, we can’t forget to name the two players who started and finished their careers at the club (without ever going into another team): Natalio Pescia (1942 to 1956) and Antonio Rattin (1956 to 1970).

Sebastián Battaglia is another honorable mention, he’s the player with the most titles (17 in total). Martín Palermo is the top scorer (236 goals in 404 games), and Roberto Mouzo is the one with the most appearances (426 games between 1971 and 1984).

La Bombonera, the Boca Juniors stadium

The team didn’t have a stadium of its own for many years, so they had to go through different courts in and around the city. It wasn’t until 1924 that they built a stadium with wooden stands on Brandsen street, in the La Boca neighborhood. They used this stadium until 1937.

That year, they began to think about building a bigger, more comfortable stadium in accordance with the number of members and supporters of the team. The construction lasted three years; the stadium we all know as ‘La Bombonera’ was officially inaugurated in May 1940 (its name is Alberto J. Armando, in honor of one of the club’s presidents).

In 1996, Mauricio Macri, who was the president at the time, remodeled the old boxes and replaced them with a rostrum. The new boxes were made of metal, and the capacity of the stadium increased to more than 57,000 people.

Those who have visited or played at La Bombonera claim that it’s a different stadium from the rest, in terms of its acoustics.