Argentinos Jrs

Early years

The club was founded in the Villa Crespo neighbourhood of Buenos Aires on 14 August 1904, by a group of anarchist boys that were part of club "Mártires de Chicago" (chosen in homage to the eight anarchists imprisoned or hanged after the 1886 Haymarket Riot in Chicago). Leandro Ravera Bianchi was named president of the recently created club.

The club immediately adopted the red and white colors as an homage to deputy Alfredo Palacios, the first congressman elected from the Socialist Party in Argentina. The club affiliated itself with the Liga Central de Football, a minor league in which small clubs and companies took part. The first match played by Argentinos Juniors was against Club La Prensa, which Argentinos Juniors lost by a catastrophic scoreline of 12–1. Nevertheless, the squad would be crowned champion at the end of the season. Argentinos Juniors played its home matches in the field located on Gaona Avenue and Añasco Street.

After the club was evicted, Argentinos Juniors played at several fields, first renting one in Villa Ballester, returning to their neighborhood of origin in 1907. After a brief stint in Villa Urquiza, the club returned to Caballito, later moving to Fraga and Estomba streets in Villa Ortúzar. In 1909, Argentinos gained affiliation with the Argentine Football Association, but in 1912 the club was involved in the first schism in Argentine football when Argentinos joined the breakaway "Federación Argentina de Football" (FAF). During those years, the club re-adopted its green and white colors as there were teams in the league using red jerseys.

In 1920, the Argentinos Juniors played a promotion play-off with El Porvenir, which saw El Porvenir prevail 3–2 on aggregate. In 1921, the team secured promotion to the Argentine top division, making its debut in the 1922 season, where Argentinos finished 6th.

In 1925, the Argentinos Juniors moved to its current location in La Paternal neighborhood, acquiring land at San Martín Avenue and Punta Arenas Street and building a stadium with a capacity of 10,000. With the new stadium finished, Argentinos Juniors was runner-up in 1926 behind champions Boca Juniors. The club had also increased its membership to 1,000.

In 1927, the two separate football associations were reunified and Argentinos played in a massive 34 team league. Later, the league was expanded to 36 and Argentinos managed to keep its place until 1930.

1931–1966

In 1931 Argentinos joined 17 other clubs in forming a breakaway professional league, a move that marked the beginning of the professional era of Argentine football. In 1934 the amateur league was broken up and Argentina once again had a unified first division. As part of this move, Argentinos Juniors were unified with Club Atlético Atlanta, the season progressed badly, and after 25 rounds the union was dissolved due to financial irregularities in the Atlanta books. Argentinos Juniors played on but finished bottom of the league with only 2 wins from 39 games.

Argentinos was allowed to keep its place in the Primera, but succumbed to relegation in 1937 after finishing second from bottom of the table.

In 1940 Argentinos enjoyed a good campaign in a new stadium, which ended up in winning the 2nd division, but the club was not allowed promotion because their ground did not meet the requirements of the Primera División, and AFA would not make an exception for Argentinos to play at another ground, even though they had done so for several other promoted clubs in previous seasons.

In 1943 Hector Ingunza started playing for the club, and went on to become the top scorer in the club's history with 143 goals in official games between 1943 and 1946.

In 1948 Argentinos suffered another injustice at the hands of the AFA. They had qualified to the end of season playoff for promotion to the Primera and were top of the league after 7 of the 11 rounds when a players strike interrupted the competition. AFA eventually abandoned the playoff and gave automatic promotion to the teams that had been relegated in 1946 and 1947 instead.

In 1954 Argentinos finished 2nd in the league having scored 88 goals, making it the highest scoring team by far. In 1955 the team finally secured promotion back to the Primera after 18 long years. Argentinos returned to top flight competition in 1956 and after finishing near the bottom of the table that year, the team secured comfortable mid-table finishes over the next few seasons.

In 1960 there was a complete overhaul of the Argentinos Juniors team. The new team performed well and it was only in the last game of the season that they missed out on the championship. Argentinos finished in 3rd place, only 2 points below the eventual champions Independiente. Although the team didn't win the championship, it is fondly remembered by those old enough to have seen them play. In the following years the team did not live up to expectations, rarely finishing in the top half of the table.

1967–1984

1967 saw the introduction of the Metropolitano and Nacional system, Argentinos struggled to adapt and only just survived relegation from the Metropolitano in the inaugural season. Over the next few seasons Argentinos had to play in several short tournaments to earn the right to stay in the Metropolitano and were far from qualifying to play in the Nacional.

From 1971 Argentinos stabilized themselves and avoided the lower positions in the table, they also qualified to play in the expanded Nacional tournaments of the early '70s, they performed well enough, but failed to qualify for the final stages. In 1975 Argentinos Juniors finished 19th of 20 teams, but were fortunate in that no teams were relegated from the Metropolitano that season.