Big Five (Argentine football)
The Big Five (Spanish: Cinco Grandes) is a term which refers to the main five teams of Argentine association football. In alphabetical order, they are Boca Juniors, Independiente, Racing, River Plate and San Lorenzo de Almagro.
The term was coined in the 1930 decade, with the establishment of the Argentine Football Association (AFA). The 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 championships 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 de Almagro 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 de La Plata in 1967.
These five teams are also the most popular in Argentina and the only ones that have fans all over the country (and not only in specific cities or regions). Boca (40%), River (33%), Racing (5%), Independiente (4%), and San Lorenzo (3.9%) hold almost 86% of the fanbase in Argentina (although an important minority of these people are also fans of smaller clubs, usually from a lower division, a phenomenon very common in Argentina), being the biggest and most successful football clubs.
The Big Five clubs are all based in Greater Buenos Aires (Boca Juniors, River Plate, and San Lorenzo de Almagro are located in the autonomous city of Buenos Aires, while Independiente and Racing are based in Avellaneda, a city within the adjacent metropolitan area, part of the Buenos Aires Province).
The term is currently used as jargon within Argentine football, rather than with an actual definition and no defined order; sympathizers of other strong teams propose the idea of a 'Sixth Big'.
There are two derbies among the Big Five: the superderby between Boca and River, considered one of the biggest and most important derbies in the world, and the Avellaneda derby between Independiente and Racing, the second-most important in the country and also one of the most important in the world. San Lorenzo's derby is with Huracán, a club which is not considered among the Big Five, but achieved the threefold vote in 1946 and is considered like a mid-sized team.