- The 19-year-old winger made his debut on August 2 with a goal and, eleven days later, scored a beauty against Recoleta in the first leg of the CONMEBOL Sudamericana Round of 16.
- Born in the La Cava neighborhood of Beccar, he joined Boca at age 7; his first youth coach remembers him doing bicycle kicks on target at 5.
"My son would throw him the ball and he would do bicycle kicks at five years old. And not just anywhere: all of them on goal." The man speaking is Christian Benítez, Leonel Flores' first coach at El Zorzal, a neighborhood club in San Isidro. The scene is almost fifteen years old and now reads like a prophecy fulfilled: that little boy doing acrobatics before he learned to read is, at 19, one of Boca Juniors' freshest revelations and one of the reasons the 'Xeneize' are playing in the CONMEBOL Sudamericana quarterfinals.
Flores was born on February 6, 2007, and grew up in La Cava, one of the most humble neighborhoods of Beccar, in the northern part of Greater Buenos Aires. His path was the classic one for Argentine gems: El Zorzal, then Ballester and Barrufaldi, until a tryout landed him at Boca at age 7, brought in by scout Diego Mazzilli. At home and at his first club, nobody calls him Leo: he is "Benja," for Benjamín, his middle name. "To me he's Benja, not Leo. But well, I know I'll have to start calling him Leo," Benítez said in an interview with Diario Olé.
His numbers in the reserves had long been sounding the alarm: eight goals in each of the last two tournaments, an Olympic goal — straight in from a corner — against Platense, four goals in a single afternoon against Aldosivi. The winger — he can play on either flank — kept pushing at the door until Rodolfo Arruabarrena opened it: he debuted on August 2 against Sarmiento in the Copa Argentina and scored his first goal that very afternoon. Nine days later came the night that introduced him to the continent: a beauty against Recoleta in the first leg of the CONMEBOL Sudamericana Round of 16, a right-footed strike across the goalkeeper at La Bombonera to set up the 3-1 win that would launch the team's crushing qualification.
The most moving part of his story, however, is not the goals but how he tells them. "I look back — when I arrived, I was a little kid. On the very day I debuted, I was on the bus and the tears kept falling because I couldn't believe it," he confessed after his performance against Recoleta. And right away, the phrase that captures his faith in his own work: "It was always a matter of time. I knew I was doing things right. I was convinced. And it happened."
Boca did their homework quickly: the contract he had signed in September 2024 was renewed through June 2029. His speed, his dribbling and the intensity he sustains for 90 minutes earned him a place in the team within a handful of weeks, and together with Tomás Aranda, another of the great revelations of the La Ribera side, he brings the freshness every squad needs alongside experienced footballers like Leandro Paredes. The World Cup-winning midfielder's incisive passes now have a new target: a kid whose bursts of pace expose the weaknesses of opposing defenses.
His breakthrough is not an isolated case but the most visible face of a phenomenon: this Sudamericana's Boca blended the pedigree of its established names with a crop of youngsters who earned big Copa minutes, and the Recoleta tie — sealed with a rout in Asunción and a 7-1 aggregate — was the celebration of that coexistence. While Miguel Merentiel was rediscovering his scoring touch, the kids were changing the team's pulse. And none did it as emphatically as Flores.
Now the calendar offers him the biggest leap of all: the quarterfinals against São Paulo, with the first leg at La Bombonera and the return at the Morumbi. For a footballer with just a handful of weeks in the first division, it will be the most demanding series of his short professional life; for Boca, confirmation that their sweeping campaign has a future as well as a present. And for La Cava, which watched him ride the bus to training for a decade, the chance to see one of its own shine in a continental semifinal.
The bicycle kicks at age five, the tears on the bus the day of his debut, the neighborhood that awaits him every time he returns. Leonel Flores' story is only beginning to be written, but it already has all the ingredients of the ones Argentine football treasures.
