San Lorenzo is also considered one of the Big Five of Argentine football, along with Independiente, River Plate, Boca Juniors, and Racing Club.

[1][2] San Lorenzo also plans to expand its main seat on La Plata Avenue, while a 15-hectare campus in Ezeiza is projected to develop an Olympic football program.

San Lorenzo gained international recognition in March 2013 with the election of Pope Francis, a supporter and socio (member) of the club.

[8] The roots of the institution are a team formed by a group of children that played football in the corner of México and Treinta y Tres Orientales streets of Buenos Aires.

Due to the team not having its own a stadium, San Lorenzo began to play its home games in a field of the Club Martínez, placed in the nearby town of the same name.

This title allowed San Lorenzo to enter the playoffs in for promotion to the Argentine Primera División, which was finally obtained after beating Club Honor y Patria by 3–0.

San Lorenzo began to play in the Argentine Football Association tournaments on 26 April 1914 in the second division, where the team finished sharing first place with Excursionistas.

In playoffs, San Lorenzo eliminated other teams before playing the final against Honor y Patria, winning 3–0 and being promoted to Primera División.

[10] On 7 May 1916, the club inaugurated its first stadium (popularly known as "Viejo Gasómetro" during a match against Estudiantes de La Plata, which San Lorenzo won by 2–1.

[13] That same year the squad also won its first international title, The Copa Campeonato del Río de la Plata after beating Montevideo Wanderers 1–0 in the final.

[14] In the following two seasons (1925 and 1926) San Lorenzo would make great performances finishing 2nd to Racing Club and Independiente respectively finally achieving its 3rd title in 1927, when both leagues AAF and AAm had joined again.

[15] Apart from winning the domestic league, in 1927 San Lorenzo won its first and only Copa Aldao, after defeating Uruguayan team (Rampla Juniors) by 1–0.

Although titles were recognised as official by the Association,[16][17][18][19] both champions, San Lorenzo and River Plate, had to play a match (named "Copa de Oro") in order to define which team would play the Copa Aldao match v. the Uruguayan Primera División champion.

After the 1936 success, San Lorenzo would not win a league title for ten years, when in 1946 proclaimed champion with a total of 46 points (the runner-up, Boca Juniors, finished 2nd.

The Spanish crowd at the stadium acclaimed San Lorenzo as "Son els millor del mon" ("You are the best in the world" in Catalan).

[20] In the 1960s, a generation of players known as carasucias (literally: dirty faces) were the darling of Argentine fans because of their offensive, careless playing and their bad-boy antics off the pitch.

The team was relegated in 1981, only to return to the top division with great fanfare in the 1982 season, which set all-time attendance records for the club.

This was their second international title, which gave them the opportunity to play the Recopa against the Copa Libertadores champion, Paraguayan club Olimpia.

In the 2003 Recopa played in Los Angeles, United States, San Lorenzo lost to Olimpia 2–0 and finished runner-up.

[23] Led by manager Ramón Díaz, San Lorenzo secured the title after the 17th round of fixtures, with two games still left.

In the finals, they defeated Nacional of Paraguay 2–1 on aggregate, concluding their championship run with a 1–0 victory in the second leg at Estadio Pedro Bidegain.

During the military government in 1979 San Lorenzo was forced to sell the stadium for a small amount of money, and a few years later the supermarket chain Carrefour bought it.

On 8 March 2012, there was a demonstration attended by over 100,000 people in favour of reclaiming the place for the club, and on 15 November the Buenos Aires City Legislature passed a bill stipulating that, in the course of six months, Carrefour should negotiate a deal with San Lorenzo in order to share the land lot, and if no accommodation was reached then the city would expropriate it with San Lorenzo's funds.

First, an extension was agreed to and one-and-a-half years later, it signed an agreement establishing that the multinational retailer will build a smaller new store on a corner of its current property, financed by funds provided by San Lorenzo.