The club was formed on 3 April 1905 by a group of five Italian immigrants. The club first played in the local league. The first match was played against a local team Mariano Moreno on 21 April 1905. They then graduated to the amateur second league and played there until 1913 when they were promoted to the first division. The club played their first international match on 8 December 1907 against Universal, Montevideo, Uruguay. Boca have the distinction of never being relegated. They won six amateur championships (1919, 1920, 1923, 1924, 1926, and 1930). They played their first professional match on 31 May 1931 and won their first professional title in 1931, when professional football was first introduced in Argentina.
There is an interesting story as to how Boca got its colors. The club first used pink as its colors but soon changed it to black and white vertical stripes. Another club already used the same colors. In 1906, Boca played the other team for the colors. It was decided that the team which won the match would keep the colors. Boca lost the match and the colors as well. The club decided to adopt the colors of the first boat to subsequently sail into the port of La Boca. The first ship was the Swedish ship Drottning Sophia. The club therefore decided to go in for the colors of Sweden which is blue and yellow .The first uniform was blue shorts worn with a blue shirt with a diagonal yellow band. The band was soon changed to a horizontal one. It is rumored that Johnson Line the owners of the Swedish Ship always had free tickets to Boca’s matches whenever they sailed into the City of Buenos Aires.
On 25 may 1916, Boca had its own stadium on the intersection of Calle Ministro Brin and Calle Senguel and they played there till 1924. They started work on another stadium in 1938. Additions were made in 1940 and 1953. The stadium was called La Bombonera (the Chocolate Box). It has a unique structure as one side is almost vertical with seating areas one on top of another. The stadium vibrates when fans jump up and down in excitement and the unique vertical side is said to sway slightly. The stadium has a capacity of 61,000 which is grossly insufficient given the huge fan base of the club.
Boca Juniors have a long standing rivalry with a rival club Club Atlético River Plate which is more upper class club unlike Boca which is perceived to be working class. When the two teams play, passions are raised, tempers frayed, and the noise and music is deafening. The stadiums are said to tremble with the noise, music and the jumping, up and down of the fans. There are fireworks, festoons, flags and the whole stadium looks like a huge, noisy fairground. The noise is deafening and sometimes there are violent clashes between the fans belonging to opposite camps or sometimes with the police. After the match, the fans of the winning club put up street signs teasing the losing sides with humorous posters all over Buenos Aires. Boca leads in the clashes between the two teams over all. The English newspaper The Observer has rated the Superclásico (match between the two rivals) at the top of 50 sporting things one must do before one’s death.
Boca has fans all over the world, particularly in Spain, Israel and Japan. Boca is very popular in Japan because of the huge successes enjoyed by the club at international matches in Japan.
The club’s players have gone on to play European Football and hence are known all over the world. Some of them are Diego Maradona, Claudio Paul Caniggia, Gabriel Batistuta, Juan Román Riquelme and Carlos Tevez. The most well known among them is of course Maradona who made dribbling look so easy.
6 times Amateur: 1919, 1920, 1923, 1924, 1926, 1930, Copa de Honor en 1925.
First Division: 1931, 1934,1935, 1940, 1943, 1944, 1954, 1962, 1964, 1965(Campeonato) 1969 (Copa Argentina y Nacional) 1970 (Nacional), 1976 (Metropolitano y Nacional), 1981 (Metropolitano), 1992,1998(Apertura) 1999(Clausura), 2000, 2003,2005 (Apertura)
Libertadores Cup: 1977, 1978, 2000, 2001, 2003, 2007Intercontinental Cup: 1977, 2000, 2003Supercopa: 1989Southamerican Cup: 2004, 2005Southamerican Recopa: 1990, 2005, 2006, 2008Master Cup: 1992Nicolás Leoz Golden Cup: 1993