AFA Liga Profesional de Fútbol
professional football league from Argentina
The Primera División (Spanish pronunciation: [pɾiˈmeɾa ðiβiˈsjon]; English: "First Division"), known officially as Liga Profesional de Fútbol, or Torneo "Mercado Libre" (Torneo MELI) for sponsorship reasons, is a professional association football league in Argentina and the highest level of the Argentine football league system. Organised by the Argentine Football Association (AFA), it operates on a system of promotion and relegation with the Primera Nacional (Second Division). The teams placed lowest at the end of the season are relegated.
Argentina held its first championship in 1891, making it the first country outside the United Kingdom to establish a football league. The Football League had debuted in England in 1888, followed by the Scottish and Irish leagues in 1890. In the early years, only teams from Buenos Aires, Greater Buenos Aires, La Plata, Rosario, Santa Fe and Córdoba were affiliated to the national association. Teams from other cities would join in later years.
In 1931, the Primera División became professional when 18 clubs left the amateur leagues to form their own professional competition.
The Argentine championship was ranked as one of the top ten strongest leagues worldwide for the 2015 calendar year by the International Federation of Football History & Statistics (IFFHS). Argentina placed 4th after La Liga (Spain), Serie A (Italy), and Bundesliga (Germany), but has since descended to 19th in the 2021 list.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “AFA Liga Profesional de Fútbol” is professional football league from Argentina. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Liga, Profesional and Fútbol, not as a finished interpretation.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 15, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q223170. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1891, 1888, 1890 and 1931.
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This entry incorporates text from “AFA Liga Profesional de Fútbol” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.