New Year's Day and a birthday at once: Independiente counts its age from 1 January 1905, the day an assembly of young shop workers in Buenos Aires gave official form to a club that had already been born in their hearts. Today the Avellaneda side turns 122, and its story begins with a rebellion and runs through a red shirt borrowed from England.

A rebellion in a café

The founders were young employees of the "A la Ciudad de Londres" store. Their older colleagues had their own team, Maipú, but the younger ones were usually left out. On 4 August 1904 eight teenagers met at the Café de la Victoria and decided to form a team of their own. The name was suggested by Rosendo Degiorgi: "Independiente", the independent ones. Since no written record of that evening survives, the official founding date became the New Year's Day assembly of 1905, where Arístides Langone was elected president.

White and blue, before the red

Few people know that Independiente did not start out in red. In its first match, on 19 January 1905 against Atlanta, it wore a white shirt with blue details. That same summer Nottingham Forest toured Argentina and beat Alumni 6-0. Langone was impressed by their play and the bright red of the English side, and proposed that his own team adopt it. The red shirt made its official debut on 10 May 1908, in an 8-0 win over Banfield. There is also a second version, which links the red to the workers' struggles of the time.

From "El Rojo" to the Red Devils

The change of colour gave the team its first nickname, El Rojo, the Red. The second came in 1926, when journalist Hugo Marini of the newspaper Crítica described the team's forward line as "devilish". Ever since, its players have been the Diablos Rojos. The image fits the Forest story too: in a 1937 interview Langone reportedly said of the touring Englishmen that "they looked like devils". The white of the first shirt and the founding year are recalled by the white "Est. 1905" t-shirt.

King of the Libertadores

No club has lifted the Copa Libertadores more often. Independiente has won it seven times: in 1964, 1965, four years in a row from 1972 to 1975, and in 1984. It added two Intercontinental Cups, in 1973 beating Juventus in Rome and in 1984 against Liverpool in Tokyo. The leader of those years was Ricardo Bochini, who played for the club from 1973 to 1991 and won twelve titles. Today the team's stadium, the Libertadores de América, also bears his name.

The Avellaneda derby

The great rival is Racing, and the two clubs' grounds are very close to each other. The Clásico de Avellaneda is considered Argentina's second most important derby after the Superclásico, and Independiente has the most wins, the biggest a 7-0 in 1940.

A fall and a rise

After the 2012-13 season came the hardest blow: the first relegation, after 101 years in the top flight. But the team came back, and in 2017 it won the Copa Sudamericana against Flamengo.

Feliz cumpleaños, Rojo. From a café in 1904 to seven Libertadores titles, your red has always been the loudest statement of independence.

See Independiente shirts and merchandise at sportarena.gr.

Photo: Estadio Libertadores de América – Jmmuguerza, Wikimedia Commons, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.