Big Five (Argentine football)
main five teams of Argentine association football
In Argentine football, the Big Five (Spanish: Cinco Grandes) refers to the traditional top five clubs: Boca Juniors, Independiente, Racing, River Plate and San Lorenzo.
History
The term was coined on August 4, 1937, when the Argentine Football Association (AFA) arranged a system of proportional representation for the sport clubs involved: the vote of clubs with either 15,000 members and at least 20 years playing the tournament and two or more championship titles would be weighted threefold, the vote of clubs with 20 years and 10,000 to 15,000 members or one championship would be weighted twofold, and the vote of the others would have the standard value. Boca Juniors, Independiente, Racing, River Plate, and San Lorenzo were the only five clubs who qualified for the threefold vote. These five teams have had a leading role in Argentine football since then, and during the first 36 years of the AFA (1931 to 1966) no team outside the five won the championship; the first one to do so was Estudiantes (LP) in 1967. The 1937 decision was officially promulgated on AFA Bulletin n° 286.
The decision brought controversy, with some journalists giving their opinions, such as reads below:
The main five clubs rule football now. Three votes each totalise fifteen, while the representative of Second Division, only one. Therefore they are majority to get anything they want".
"Since a while ago, the big five, joined as a block..."
In August 1941, the book Historia de los 5 Grandes del Fútbol Argentino, written by anonymous sports journalists, stated "...this was written with no commercial purposes, fulfilling the purpose of bringing unbiased and accurate data to million football supporters, so they can be avoid wrong judgement, constituting a serious testimony of immediate reference to put an end to heated discussions that frequently happens".
The vote was modified every two years.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Big Five (Argentine football)” is main five teams of Argentine association football. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Five, Argentine and football, not as a finished interpretation.
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The phrase “main five teams of Argentine association football” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Contemporary correspondence, administrative files and participant testimony can test how later narratives organized the event or institution. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jan 18, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2972901. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1937, 1931, 1966 and 1967.
Official terminology may obscure informal participation, dissent or communities documented only indirectly. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Big Five (Argentine football)” 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.