River Plate (ARG)

Club Atlético River Plate, better known simply as River Plate, is a multi-sport organisation based in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The club was founded on 25 May 1901 in the La Boca neighbourhood, following the merger of the clubs Santa Rosa and La Rosales. Its name comes from the old designation given in British English to the Río de la Plata. Its main discipline is professional men's football, which currently plays in the Superliga Argentina. In addition, 65 other disciplines are practised at the club, it has educational institutes at all academic levels, and it fosters cultural and social activities of various kinds.

Its stadium is the Antonio Vespucio Liberti, popularly known as "El Monumental". It is the largest-capacity stadium in the country and the sixth in the Americas, with a capacity for 70,074 spectators. The Argentina national football team habitually plays its home matches at this venue.

River Plate is one of the most decorated and recognised football clubs in the world, with a total of 66 official titles. Of that total, 63 were won during the professional era of Argentine football, making it the most successful club in history since professionalisation in 1931. Nationally, it holds the record of being the greatest champion of Argentine football, having won 36 Primera División championships. In addition, it won the title in 12 official national cups. River holds several records at national level: it leads the historical table of the Argentine Primera División, and is the club with the most matches won, the most goals scored and the best goal difference during the professional stage of Argentine football, as well as the club with the fewest matches lost and goals conceded. Moreover, it is the team that has most often achieved a league three-peat, on four occasions.

At the international level it has 18 official senior titles, 12 of them organised by the South American Football Confederation (Conmebol), among which are one Intercontinental Cup, four Copas Libertadores, one Copa Interamericana, one Copa Sudamericana, one Supercopa Sudamericana, three Recopas Sudamericanas and one Suruga Bank Cup. The remaining six titles consist of five Copas Aldao and one Cup Tie Competition, being international tournaments organised jointly by the Asociación del Fútbol Argentino and the Asociación Uruguaya de Fútbol in the period before the organisation of club tournaments by Conmebol. It holds first place in the historical table of the Copa Libertadores de América, having played it on 35 occasions. It is the Argentine club with the most participations, fifth in the overall standings and the fourth most decorated club together with Club Estudiantes de La Plata.

One of its greatest sporting achievements came on 14 December 1986, when it was crowned Intercontinental Cup champion by defeating the representative of the European Champion Clubs' Cup, Steaua Bucharest of Romania, 1–0 at the National Stadium in Tokyo. Thanks to that conquest it belongs to the select group of the only 29 clubs in the world that have won the highest club football championship at world level, among more than 300,000 clubs recognised by FIFA.

It is one of the so-called "five big ones of Argentine football", a nickname that emerged in 1937 when the AFA introduced the so-called "proportional vote", a rule that consisted of giving greater decision-making power to those clubs with the greatest number of members, seniority and number of titles. Together with Boca Juniors, it takes part in the so-called Superclásico of Argentine football, an internationally recognised event which the English newspaper The Observer ranked first among the 50 "sporting spectacles you must see before you die". At the same time, the also British The Sun describes it as the "most intense sporting experience in the world". It also plays historic derbies with Independiente, San Lorenzo and Racing Club, the latter being the oldest in Argentine football (112 years).

The IFFHS, in its historical world ranking between 1991 and 2009, places it in ninth position, which makes it the club with the best position in the table in the whole continent. Since the year 2000, this same institution has chosen it four times as the World's Best Team of the Month. It was named by FIFA the ninth Best Club of the 20th century following the results of a survey of readers of that organisation's bimonthly magazine, FIFA World Magazine, in December 2000, occupying the same place as AC Milan of Italy and Flamengo of Brazil, and surpassing teams such as Inter of Italy, Liverpool of England or Benfica of Portugal, among others, thus remaining the best Argentine team in this ranking and third at continental level, behind Santos FC of Brazil and Peñarol of Uruguay. According to this FIFA distinction, River Plate is the best Argentine club of the 20th century, which is why it proclaims itself the "Champion of the Century".