Michael Ngemba Luyambula (born 8 June 1999) is a professional

footballer A football player or footballer is a sportsperson who plays one of the different types of football. The main types of football are association football, American football, Canadian football, Australian rules football, Gaelic football, rugby ...

who plays as a

goalkeeper In many team sports which involve scoring goals, the goalkeeper (sometimes termed goaltender, netminder, GK, goalie or keeper) is a designated player charged with directly preventing the opposing team from scoring by blocking or intercepting o ...

for

Regionalliga West The Regionalliga West is a German semi-professional football division administered by the Western German Football Association based in Duisburg. It is one of the five German regional football associations. Being the single flight of the Western ...

club

Sportfreunde Lotte VfL Sportfreunde Lotte is a German association football club from Lotte, North Rhine-Westphalia. The football team is part of a sports club with approximately 1400 members and departments for handball, walking, gymnastics, and swimming, as well ...

. Born in Germany, Luyambula came through

Borussia Dortmund Ballspielverein Borussia 09 e. V. Dortmund, commonly known as Borussia Dortmund (), BVB (), or simply Dortmund (), is a German professional sports club based in Dortmund, North Rhine-Westphalia. It is best known for its men's professional fo ...

's youth system but was released without playing for the club's first team. He joined English second-tier club

Birmingham City Birmingham City Football Club is a professional association football, football club based in Birmingham, England. Formed in 1875 as Small Heath Alliance, it was renamed Small Heath in 1888, Birmingham in 1905, and Birmingham City in 1943. Sin ...

in 2018. He spent time on loan to Hungerford Town of the National League South in 2018–19, to

League Two The English Football League Two (often referred to as League Two for short or Sky Bet League Two for sponsorship purposes, and known as the Football League Two from 2004 until 2016) is the third and lowest division of the English Football Lea ...

club

Crawley Town Crawley Town Football Club is a professional association football club based in the town of Crawley, West Sussex, England. The club was founded as Crawley Football Club in 1896, changed its name to Crawley Town Football Club in 1958. The team com ...

in 2019–20, during which he played in the EFL Cup and EFL Trophy, and to

AFC Telford United AFC Telford United is a football club based in Telford, Shropshire, England. The club was formed in 2004 after the original Telford United, founded in 1872, folded due to financial problems. Currently members of the National League North, they ...

of the

National League North The National League North, formerly Conference North, is a division of the National League in England, immediately below the National League division. Along with the National League South, it is at the second level of the National League Syst ...

in 2020. Released by Birmingham at the end of the 2019–20 season, he returned to Germany with

VfB Lübeck VfB Lübeck is a German association football club playing in Lübeck, Schleswig-Holstein in the country's north. In addition to its football side the 1,000 member sports club also has departments for badminton, women's gymnastics, handball, and ...

, newly promoted to the

3. Liga The 3. Liga is a professional association football league and the third division in Germany. In the German football league system, it is positioned between the 2. Bundesliga and the fourth-tier Regionalliga. The modern 3. Liga was formed for th ...

. He moved on to Sportfreunde Lotte for the 2021–22 season. Luyambula was named in a long list for the DR Congo under-20 team in 2018, and was called up to the senior squad's training camp in June 2017.

Club career

Early life and club career

Luyambula was born in

Neumünster Neumünster () is a city in the middle of Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. With more than 79,000 registered inhabitants, it is the fourth-largest municipality in Schleswig-Holstein (behind Kiel, Lübeck and Flensburg). History The city was fi ...

, Germany. As a youngster he played for TSV Kronshagen before joining

youth system In sporting terminology, a youth system (or youth academy) is a youth investment program within a particular team or league, which develops and nurtures young talent in farm teams, with the vision of using them in the first team in the future if t ...

as an under-12. He was an unused substitute for Borussia Dortmund II in a couple of Regionalliga matches in 2018, but was released without playing for the club's first team.

Birmingham City

Luyambula joined English

Championship In sport, a championship is a competition in which the aim is to decide which individual or team is the champion. Championship systems Various forms of competition can be referred to by the term championship. Title match system In this system ...

club

on trial, and signed a short-term contract in August 2018. In compliance with transfer restrictions imposed on the club by the

English Football League The English Football League (EFL) is a league of professional football clubs from England and Wales. Founded in 1888 as the Football League, the league is the oldest such competition in the world. It was the top-level football league in Engl ...

, he could play only for Birmingham's under-23 team, for which he made 12 appearances in the first half of the 2018–19 season.

Hungerford Town

He also spent three weeks on loan to Hungerford Town of the sixth-tier National League South in October, during which he made his senior debut in their FA Cup third qualifying round defeat by

Wealdstone Wealdstone () is a district located in the centre of the London Borough of Harrow, England. It is located just north of Harrow town centre and is south of Harrow Weald, west of Belmont and Kenton, and east of Headstone. The area accommodates ...

. In mid-December, he returned to Hungerford on loan for an initial month, and after the EFL gave their permission for his Birmingham contract to be extended to the end of the season, the loan was likewise extended. Luyumbula was the regular goalkeeper during the second half of Hungerford's season. He made 20 league appearances and helped his team avoid

relegation In sports leagues, promotion and relegation is a process where teams are transferred between multiple divisions based on their performance for the completed season. Leagues that use promotion and relegation systems are often called open leagues. ...

in the final fixture.

Crawley Town

After Luyambula signed a one-year contract with Birmingham, he joined

(fourth-tier) club

on loan for the 2019–20 season. Crawley manager Gabriele Cioffi hoped he would "put pressure on" established first-team goalkeeper

Glenn Morris Glenn Edgar Morris (June 18, 1912 – January 31, 1974) was a U.S. track and field athlete. He won a gold medal in the Olympic decathlon in 1936, setting new world and Olympic records. He attended Colorado A&M — now known as Colorado Sta ...

. Luyambula made his first competitive appearance for Crawley in the starting eleven for the EFL Cup first-round match away to

Walsall Walsall (, or ; locally ) is a market town and administrative centre in the West Midlands County, England. Historically part of Staffordshire, it is located north-west of Birmingham, east of Wolverhampton and from Lichfield. Walsall is th ...

on 13 August 2019; his team won 3–2. He kept his place for the next rounds of the competition, "punching and catching everything Norwich flung into his six-yard area" and keeping a clean sheet as Crawley beat the

Premier League The Premier League (legal name: The Football Association Premier League Limited) is the highest level of the men's English football league system. Contested by 20 clubs, it operates on a system of promotion and relegation with the English Fo ...

team, and then facing a

penalty shoot-out The penalty shootout is a method of determining a winner in sports matches that would have otherwise been drawn or tied. The rules for penalty shootouts vary between sports and even different competitions; however, the usual form is similar to pe ...

to eliminate Stoke City. He also appeared in the EFL Trophy, but made no league appearances, and was recalled by his parent club in January 2020 with the intention of finding first-team football for him.

AFC Telford United

Luyambula signed for

on 30 January 2020 on loan until 16 May. He played five times in the

before the

season A season is a division of the year based on changes in weather, ecology, and the number of daylight hours in a given region. On Earth, seasons are the result of the axial parallelism of Earth's tilted orbit around the Sun. In temperate and ...

was first suspended and then ended early because of the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identi ...

. Birmingham confirmed in May 2020 that he would be released when his contract expired at the end of the season.

Return to German football

Luyambula returned to his native northern Germany and, on 4 June, signed a one-year contract with

, newly promoted to the

for the 2020–21 season. He spent the season as backup to

Lukas Raeder Lukas Raeder (born 30 December 1993) is a German former professional footballer who played as a goalkeeper. Career Early career Raeder was at Essener SV, ESC Rellinghausen 06, MSV Duisburg, Rot-Weiss Essen, and Schalke 04 during his youth team ...

, made no first-team appearances, and signed for

club

in August 2021 after a trial.

International career

Luyambula was named in a 58-man long list for the DR Congo under-20 team in 2018, and was called up to the senior squad's training camp in June 2017.

Career statistics

Notes

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Luyambula, Michael 1999 births Living people People from Neumünster German men's footballers Democratic Republic of the Congo men's footballers Men's association football goalkeepers Borussia Dortmund players Borussia Dortmund II players Birmingham City F.C. players Hungerford Town F.C. players Crawley Town F.C. players AFC Telford United players VfB Lübeck players Sportfreunde Lotte players National League (English football) players Footballers from Schleswig-Holstein