page_title: Arsenal de Sarandí
section_title: The beginning
hierarchical_section_title: Arsenal de Sarandí / History / The beginning
caption_attribution_description: English: Arsenal de Sarandí 1962 team, which became champion that year.
context_page_description: Arsenal Fútbol Club, usually referred as Arsenal de Sarandí, is an Argentine sports club from the Sarandí district of Avellaneda Partido, Greater Buenos Aires.
  The football team currently plays in Primera División, the top division of the Argentine football league system. The squad plays its home games at the Estadio Julio H. Grondona, named after one of the founders, which has a capacity of 16,000. It opened in 1964 but was not used in the First Division until 2004. The club's colours are red and light blue, in honour of the traditional teams of Avellaneda. Arsenal won its first Primera División championship in 2012. Until then, club's major title had been the Copa Sudamericana won in 2007.
  Apart from football, the club hosts other sports such as futsal and handball.
context_section_description: The club was founded in January 1957 by brothers Héctor and Julio Humberto Grondona. The club were founded near to where the country's military arsenal was housed, which inspired the name. The team's shirt colour is light blue with a diagonal red band (similar to the shirt used by River Plate). The colours were chosen as a combination of the two older clubs in Avellaneda – Racing (light blue) and Independiente (red).
  Julio Grondona went on to become president of Independiente, and then, in 1979, president of the Argentine Football Association, until 2014. He was also a vice-president of FIFA. Héctor Grondona, and then son Julio Ricardo, became presidents of Arsenal.
  The club's best known former player is Jorge Burruchaga, who started his career at Arsenal in 1979, and had several stints as coach. Burru, as he is nicknamed, scored the winning goal for Argentina in the 1986 FIFA World Cup final against Germany.
  Arsenal's football team was promoted to successively higher divisions in 1962, 1986 and 1992, finally reaching the Primera División in 2002.
  On 6 September 2006, Arsenal and Spanish club FC Barcelona (Barça) struck a deal whereby in exchange for the option to acquire young players that have not played more than one year in the Arsenal first team, Barça would help to improve Arsenal's infrastructure.
  A member from Barça was to oversee the project, and visit the club on a monthly basis. This deal, however, fell through in 2007, reportedly because Arsenal could not afford the infrastructure to keep up with the plan.
caption: The 1962 Arsenal team, which won the first official title for the institution.
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