Oscar Junior Benítez, a player who started in spurts and today has the doors of football closed

The suicide of Anabelia Ayalahis ex-partner, during the last night of 2023, once again put the footballer in the eye of the storm Oscar Benitez, who had already been arrested for threatening the woman’s father with a firearm and was under house arrest awaiting trial. With such a recent history, the player’s name has long been linked much more to police pages than to sports ones.

Before this ultraviolent drift that seems to have definitively put an end to his career, Benítez was a player who, despite having difficulty establishing himself in all the clubs he played for, He has two titles with Lanús and two with Boca on his CVthe club he is a fan of.

Known as Junior (because his father’s name is also Oscar), He started playing baby football in the club San Martín de Adrogué., the city where he was born and raised. He had a short spell in Boca’s youth team and at the age of 11 he moved to Lanús, where he played in all the youth teams. His debut in the Primera took place on 6 May 2012 in the 1-0 victory over Godoy Cruz in the Malvinas Argentinas: Gabriel Schurrer brought him on in the 26th minute of the second half for the Uruguayan Mauricio Pereyra.

That year he didn’t have many more opportunities and alternated between the Reserve and the First. He started touring more with Guillermo Barros Schelotto. who began to exploit the winger’s skill, speed, good aerial play and precision finishing. Her name began to resonate louder after December 1, 2013, when the Garnet They drew 2-2 with Boca for the penultimate match of the Initial Tournament.

That day Barros Schelotto booked some of the usual starters for the Copa Sudamericano final which would be played against Porte Preta. Therefore, before Xeneize Benítez played from the start and was a character. From Yapa, he scored his first goal in the First Division. “I felt very good. “I am very happy because this is due to the commitment of my whole life.”he told Clarin after that meeting.

Ten days later, Benítez also started the rematch against Ponte Preta. He thus had the pleasure of celebrating the South American title on grass, the first of two obtained at the club. The other was the 2016 national tournament, which the team hosted Jorge Almiron obtained after beating San Lorenzo 4 to 0 in the final played at the Monumental.

Although he had not been a permanent fixture in that competition as many fans resisted him, Almirón took him to the final in the final and the winger responded by scoring the first goal of the duel (the others were by Miguel Almirón, José Sand and Lautaro Acosta). That match, his 120th in the Granata shirt (he scored 7 goals), was his last at Lanús, as in July of that year he was sold for 3.5 million euros to Benfica, who offered him a five-year contract.

“This is a model club that I really like. I hope to integrate quickly into the group, get back into shape as soon as possible and play to achieve goals, win things and bring joy to the fans.”, he said upon his arrival in Lisbon. However, he hasn’t even played an official match with the Portuguese champion.

Without a place in the team led by Rui Vitória, he was loaned out in August to Sporting Braga as part of the operation that brought Portuguese national team midfielder Rafa Silva to the Lisbon team. But even there he did not find the continuity he desired: conditioned by some injuries, he barely managed to play five games (in none of them did he remain on the pitch for more than 45 minutes).

In January 2017 he interrupted his relationship with Sporting Braga and was loaned from Benfica to Boca for 18 months. “I came for two reasons: because I didn’t play and because I’m a Boca fan.”, he said after joining the team where he reunited with Guillermo Barros Schelotto. “He is a very technical player, but also very strong. He has a lot of physical presence. He can stay in the defensive zone and appear quickly in attack,” praised the coach who had already trained him in Lanús.

His time at the Riverside Club was not very productive. He played 24 games in a year and a half, although he only started five games and scored three goals. In any case, he was part of the team that won the national championship twice in the 2016/17 and 2017/18 seasons.. Once his loan expired, the management led by Daniele Angelici made no attempt to retain him.

Despite offers from Turkish and Greek clubs, Benítez decides to stay in the country: in July 2018 he manages to get a loan from Benfica Juniors of Argentina for one year and with a purchase option of 2.3 million euros for 50% of the token. It was a misstep: after just five months and nine games, the La Paternal club severed ties.

His next experience, again on loan from Benfica, arrived Atletico San Luis. In December 2018 he joined the team that a few days earlier had defeated Dorados de Sinaloa, led by Diego Armando Maradona, in the final of the Apertura Tournament of the Mexican Promotion League. In the first semester, with Alfonso Sosa as coach, he almost didn’t play. In the second, already in the top category and with the Uruguayan coach Gustavo Matosas, he had more continuity. In any case, at the end of 2019 he left the cast of Potosí.

After leaving Benfica permanently, he arrives in January 2020 Dolphin, who had won his first title in the Ecuadorian championship a couple of weeks earlier. It was also difficult for him to earn a place while the team was led by Carlos Ischia, with whom he did not build a good bond. “Only friends of… play here and that’s how it goes”wrote the winger on his Instagram account at the end of the 2-0 match against Olmedo at the beginning of September, a few hours before his dismissal by the Ischia management.

In the first match after the departure of Carlos Bianchi’s former assistant, Delfín beat Deportivo Cuenca 2-1 and Benítez was the protagonist of the duel and scored his only goal with the Manta team shirt. During Miguel Ángel Zahzú’s short tenure he played more often, but after the Argentine coach’s dismissal in early December, he was relegated again.

The last club that had the services of Benítez was Atletico Tucumánwho signed him in February 2021. Irregularities and disagreements with a coach (this time, Omar De Felippe) accompanied him again. “It’s difficult when you don’t have ownership and you don’t feel the support of the coaching staff. The coach changes every game because he hasn’t defined the starting team and I think this takes away the player’s confidence.”he complained in September after the 2-1 defeat against Boca at the Monumental José Fierro.

Three months before that scene, he had been involved in an off-sports accident in San Miguel de Tucumán: He was delayed because he was riding a Harley Davidson motorcycle with no license plate or vehicle documentation.who was stopped by the road authorities of the provincial capital.

Shortly after leaving Atlético, in January 2022, Benítez was arrested, charged with trespassing, threats, injury and resisting authorities, after beating and intimidating Juan Carlos Ayala., father of his ex-partner, in the family home in Adrogué. At the time, Ayala reported that his daughter was a victim of gender violence, but she did not dare to press charges.

With doors closed in Argentine football, the winger made one last attempt abroad, although he was frustrated before he even put on his boots. In early March 2023, the Palmaflor club of Bolivia He hired him to play only the Copa Sudamericana, as he had a full quota of foreigners for the local tournament.

His debut would take place on the 9th of the same month in a first round match of the tournament against Blooming. But the international transfer certificate did not arrive in time, so he had to watch from an audience at the Ramón Tahuichi Aguilera stadium the duel lost 6-0 by the Villa Tunari team and which sealed their rapid elimination from the subcontinental competition. Benítez thus said goodbye to Palmaflor without even having made his debut. After that no club looked for him again.