Apart from football, other activities practised at the club are athletics, basketball, boxing, chess, field hockey, futsal, handball, gymnastics, martial arts, Pilates, roller skating, scuba diving, swimming, tennis, volleyball, water polo, and yoga.

On 4 August of that year, they met in a bar on Perú Street (just two blocks from the Plaza de Mayo and the Casa Rosada), there they made the decision to reject an invitation to be part of Atlanta (also founded those days) and proclaimed the creation of the "Independiente Foot-Ball Club", symbolizing their independence ideals.

Fifteen days after the first meeting, on 19 August, they played the first game in their history, a 2–2 tie with Atlanta, on a field located in the Flores neighborhood of Buenos Aires.

The club competed in 1905 in zonal tournaments like the Villalobos Cup, where they faced for the first time to Boca Juniors (created just four months before) on 27 August, being victorious 4–1 in Flores.

At this championship they faced short-lived teams like Highland Forest, Gutemberg, Presidente Roca, Imperio, Mariano Moreno, General Arenales, La Prensa, Primero de Mayo and others.

They also met River Plate in a friendly match, where the white IFBC won 3–1 with goals from Julio Mantecón, Juan Irigoyen and Miguel Peluffo.

With a bad performance at the league, poor stadium condition and the members having to travel on horse to a field far away from their houses, it was a matter of discussion whether Independiente should have continued existing, but passion for football won and further efforts were made.

Soon after, thanks to the incorporation of twelve champion footballers with Racing, who "crossed the street" after an internal conflict of that club (among them Germán Vidaillac, founder), Independiente radically changed its face and once again gained access to the Second Division after being runner-up in the only season of the club's history in Third Division, with an impressive record of 14 victories out of 14 games played (40 goals for and only 4 against), but, unfortunately, they failed to finish the season with a title as they lost the championship final to Banfield 0–3 at the Estadio GEBA.

On the other hand, it is also true that Julio Mantecón, an important member of the Socialist Party, was the general secretary and forward, for whom bright red symbolized the workers' struggle.

On 4 February 1912 the red team won its first friendly international cup, the Anglo-Argentine Association Trophy, by 3–0 over Uruguayan side Universal, with a brace from Enrique Colla and one from Francisco Roldán.

In 14 July, 1912, Independiente debuted in the Primera División against Kimberley (winning 3–0 in Avellaneda), finishing the tournament as runners-up after the red squad decided to withdraw the final versus Porteño claiming an unfairly disallowed goal.

The Avellaneda team managed to become champions of the Argentine Primera División for the first time in 1922, a tough championship where Independiente finished ahead of River Plate, San Lorenzo and Racing, who finished second, third and fourth respectively, with an impressive record of 97 goals in that season, of which Manuel Seoane scored 55 of them, keeping a record of most goals in a single Primera División championship by one player.

Manuel Seoane returned to the team in 1926 and led Independiente to win its second Primera División title, being nicknamed "Diablos Rojos" (Red Devils) since this moment among the football public, after the journalist Hugo Marini of the Crítica journal described as "devilish" the forward line (the old 2-3-5 style) starring Manuel Seoane, Alberto Lalín, Raimundo Orsi, Luis Ravaschino and Zoilo Canavery.

Raimundo Orsi went on to become Independiente's first globally recognized figure, having won the 1927 Copa América and an Olympic medal for Argentina and then moving to Juventus, before winning the 1934 World Cup with the Italian national team, scoring in the Final against Czechoslovakia.

That meant they had to move again, so they purchased a low-priced uninhabited swampy land located within the limits of the Avellaneda city between the Racing Stadium and the Great Southern Railway tracks, further fueling the rivalry with its neighbors.

The club had to go through repeated attempts by the "racinguist" mayor of Avellaneda, Alberto Barceló, to try to sabotage the construction of the stadium by sending municipal employees to take the material, trying to paralyze the works and, finally, trying to invent a street where the swamp had just been filled in.

Arcadi Balaguer, president of FC Barcelona, became surprised after realizing that Independiente defender Guillermo Ronzoni was the guy selling tickets at the stadium's entrance a few minutes before the match started.

At the end of the 1930s the club, now professional, entered a path of titles led by its three new figures: Arsenio Erico, Antonio Sastre and Vicente de la Mata, one of the most offensive tridents in the history of football, with 556 goals in total.

In 1938 they won the club's first international title at the legendary Estadio Centenario in Montevideo (place where Uruguay was world champion in 1930), beating Peñarol 3–1 with goals from De la Mata, Zorrilla and Erico.

Since almost all Asian teams wore red, and Independiente didn't carry any alternative kits, they were given yellow Sweden jerseys, which were later used in the 1975 Copa Libertadores finals against Unión Española.

However, soonly after they won the postponed 1976 Copa Interamericana (the third in a row) against Mexican side Atlético Español through the penalty shoot-out after two ties at the Venezuelan Olympic Stadium.

In 1983, another unprecedented event occurred again at the local level when Independiente became Argentine champion, competing on the last date in La Doble Visera against archi-rivals Racing, a team that was relegated to Primera B for the first time in its history.

The duel against Liverpool was special, since it was the first confrontation between Argentine and British teams after the Falklands War that occurred two years earlier and marked the end of the civil-military dictatorship.

Other highlights on the non-competitive stage include the winning of the 1965 Consular Cup 2–1 on aggregate over Napoli (first in New York and then in Toronto), beating Greek Panathinaikos (champions of Europe) 1–0 in Athens in 1972, beating Inter Milan 1–0 in the Estadio Azteca in 1974, tying 2–2 with the famous American team New York Cosmos on their 1985 farewell season, and playing an unofficial club world championship in 1989 against Arsenal (champions of England), which they lost in Miami 2–1.

In 1994 and 1995, "el Rojo" obtained two more international titles; the two-time Supercopa Libertadores, the first against Boca Juniors and the second against a Romário-led Flamengo, at the latter becoming the first foreign club to be crowned champions at the Maracanã Stadium in Rio de Janeiro, before an impressive attendance of 105,000 Brazilian spectators.

Among other players, a young Sergio Agüero was sold to Atlético Madrid for a record US$28,75 million in 2006, which was planned to be used for a complete renovation of the La Doble Visera to a brand new stadium.

Despite the also millionaire transfers of Oscar Ustari and Germán Denis, Independiente went through critical moments in the institutional and football sphere with million-dollar debts, embargoes, inhibitions from AFA and FIFA and even bankruptcy petitions.

Under the presidency of Hugo Moyano, chief of the CGT, Independiente advanced in the completion works of the stadium and was champion in the 2017 Copa Sudamericana versus Vinícius Júnior's Flamengo and, later, the 2018 Suruga Bank Championship held in Osaka, Japan, which extended the international record of the club recognized by CONMEBOL to 18 titles and recovered its record as the club with the most international titles in the Americas (shared with Boca Juniors).

As a result, a collection was carried out among fans and other donors through a digital wallet raising US$3.5 million, an amount of money that managed to help the club lift that dangerous embargo.

However, after an austere season and a strong appreciation of the Argentine peso under the Presidency of Javier Milei, the club overcame the red numbers and earned a spot to the 2025 Copa Sudamericana.