Vitaly Janelt (born 10 May 1998) is a German 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

defensive midfielder A midfielder is an outfield position in association football. Midfielders may play an exclusively defensive role, breaking up attacks, and are in that case known as defensive midfielders. As central midfielders often go across boundari ...

for club Brentford. Janelt is a product of the

Hamburger SV Hamburger Sport-Verein e.V. (), commonly known as Hamburger SV () or Hamburg (), is a German sports club based in Hamburg, with its largest branch being its football section. Though the current HSV was founded in June 1919 from a merger of three ...

and

RB Leipzig RasenBallsport Leipzig e.V. (), commonly known as RB Leipzig, and colloquially referred to as Red Bull Leipzig, is a German professional football club based in Leipzig, Saxony. The club was founded in 2009 by the initiative of the company Red Bul ...

academies An academy (Attic Greek: Ἀκαδήμεια; Koine Greek Ἀκαδημία) is an institution of secondary or tertiary higher learning (and generally also research or honorary membership). The name traces back to Plato's school of philosop ...

and made his professional breakthrough at

VfL Bochum Verein für Leibesübungen Bochum 1848 Fußballgemeinschaft, commonly referred to as simply VfL Bochum (), is a German association football club based in the city of Bochum, North Rhine-Westphalia. The club has spent 35 seasons in the Bundeslig ...

in 2017, before moving to England to join Brentford in 2020. He was capped by Germany at youth level and was a part of the 2021 European U21 Championship-winning squad.

Club career

RB Leipzig

After beginning his career with spells in the

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 ...

s at Bargfelder SV, SSC Hagen Ahrensburg and

, Janelt joined the academy at

in 2014, for a fee reported to be €150,000. He signed a five-year professional contract in July 2016 and progressed to the

reserve team In sports, a reserve team is a team composed of players under contract to a club but who do not normally play in matches for the first team. Reserve teams often include back-up players from the first team, young players who need playing time to i ...

, for which he made six

Regionalliga Nordost The Regionalliga Nordost is the fourth tier of German football league system, German football in the states of Berlin, Brandenburg, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Saxony-Anhalt, Saxony and Thuringia. These comprise the states of former East Germany ...

appearances during the 2016–17 season. Prior to Janelt's departure from the Red Bull Arena at the end of the 2017–18 season, disciplinary issues led to him spending 18 months away on

loan In finance, a loan is the lending of money by one or more individuals, organizations, or other entities to other individuals, organizations, etc. The recipient (i.e., the borrower) incurs a debt and is usually liable to pay interest on that ...

. He failed to win a call into a first team matchday squad during his time with RB Leipzig.

VfL Bochum

On 9 January 2017, Janelt joined

2. Bundesliga The 2. Bundesliga ( ) is the second division of professional football in Germany. It was implemented 11 years after the founding of the Fußball-Bundesliga as the new second division for professional football. The 2. Bundesliga is ranked below ...

club

on loan until 30 June 2018, with an option to buy. He made 20 appearances during an injury-affected spell and signed a three-year contract with the club on 30 May 2018, for an undisclosed fee. Janelt looked set to make a breakthrough late in the 2018–19 season, before a torn adductor ruled him out of the final eight matches of the campaign. He broke into the first team in 2019–20, making 24 appearances during a season which was ended prematurely by 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 ...

. In the final season of his contract, Janelt departed VfL Bochum in October 2020 and made 54 appearances during years at the

Ruhrstadion Ruhrstadion (), known as Vonovia Ruhrstadion for sponsorship reasons, is a football stadium in Bochum, Germany. It is the home ground for the VfL Bochum and has a capacity of 27,599. It was known as rewirpowerSTADION (or, rarely, ) from 2006 to ...

. In December 2021, Janelt stated that he "struggled to find consistency" during his spell with the club. He was frequently deployed as a utility player, filling in as a

left winger A midfielder is an outfield position in association football. Midfielders may play an exclusively defensive role, breaking up attacks, and are in that case known as defensive midfielders. As central midfielders often go across boundarie ...

central defender In the sport of association football, a defender is an outfield position whose primary role is to stop attacks during the game and prevent the opposition from scoring. Centre-backs are usually positioned in pairs, with one full-back on either s ...

and on one occasion, as a stand-in

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 ...

late in a match.

Brentford

On 3 October 2020, Janelt moved to England to sign a four-year contract with

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 Brentford for an undisclosed fee, reported to be €600,000. Despite being earmarked by co-

director of football A sporting director, or director of sport, is an executive management position in a sports club. The role is well known as a manager role for European football clubs, which are sometime also "sports clubs", offering many types of sports. The sport ...

Rasmus Ankersen as an overseas player who would "need time to adapt to

English football Association football is the most popular sport in England, where the first modern set of rules for the code were established in 1863, which were a major influence on the development of the modern Laws of the Game. With over 40,000 association f ...

", an injury suffered by first-choice defensive midfielder Christian Nørgaard in the days following the transfer allowed Janelt to break into the matchday squad. By late October, he had assumed Nørgaard's starting role. Janelt retained his place throughout the campaign and finished Brentford's 2021 EFL Championship play-off Final-winning

2020–21 The dash is a punctuation mark consisting of a long horizontal line. It is similar in appearance to the hyphen but is longer and sometimes higher from the baseline. The most common versions are the endash , generally longer than the hyphen b ...

season with 47 appearances and four goals. Janelt began the 2021–22 season as an ever-present starter in

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 ...

matches and he scored his first goal of the season in a 3–3 draw with

Liverpool Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough in Merseyside, England. With a population of in 2019, it is the 10th largest English district by population and its metropolitan area is the fifth largest in the United Kingdom, with a populat ...

on 25 September 2021. Aside from missing one month due to a thigh injury suffered in October 2021, Janelt continued in his virtual ever-present role and signed a new four-year contract on 1 April 2022. The following day, he scored his third and fourth goals of the season in a 4–1 win over

Chelsea Chelsea or Chelsey may refer to: Places Australia * Chelsea, Victoria Canada * Chelsea, Nova Scotia * Chelsea, Quebec United Kingdom * Chelsea, London, an area of London, bounded to the south by the River Thames ** Chelsea (UK Parliament consti ...

and finished the campaign with 35 appearances. Janelt began the 2022–23 season primarily in a substitute role, but captained the club for the first time during a 2–0 EFL Cup second round win over

Colchester United Colchester United Football Club is a professional association football club based in the city of Colchester, Essex, England. The team competes in , the fourth tier of the English football league system. Founded in 1937, the club spent its earl ...

on 23 August 2022.

International career

Janelt was capped by Germany at U15, U17, U19,

U20 U20 or U-20 may refer to: Naval vessels * * , a sloop of the Royal Navy * , a submarine of the Austro-Hungarian Navy Other uses * Great truncated cuboctahedron * Meizu U20, a smartphone * Roland U-20, a synthesizer * Small nucleolar RNA SN ...

and U21 levels. He was a part of the Germany squads at the 2015 UEFA European U17 Championship and the 2015 U17 World Cup. Janelt made four appearances during the U21 team's successful 2021 UEFA European U21 Championship qualifying campaign. He made four substitute appearances during the team's successful

finals Final, Finals or The Final may refer to: *Final (competition), the last or championship round of a sporting competition, match, game, or other contest which decides a winner for an event ** Another term for playoffs, describing a sequence of cont ...

campaign. On 25 September 2021, it was reported that German senior head coach

Hansi Flick Hans-Dieter "Hansi" Flick (born 24 February 1965) is a German professional football coach and former player who is the manager of the Germany national team. From August 2006 to July 2014, he was the assistant coach of Germany under manager Joac ...

was present at one of Janelt's club matches.

Style of play

or "number eight", Janelt is "strong, versatile, commanding, composed in possession, possesses great awareness, is a good passer and an aggressive winner of the ball". He had also been deployed at

centre back In the sport of association football, a defender is an outfield position whose primary role is to stop attacks during the game and prevent the opposition from scoring. Centre-backs are usually positioned in pairs, with one full-back on either ...

and left back.

Personal life

Janelt's brothers Vincent and Victor became footballers in the German lower leagues.

Career statistics

Honours

Brentford * EFL Championship play-offs:

2021 File:2021 collage V2.png, From top left, clockwise: the James Webb Space Telescope was launched in 2021; Protesters in Yangon, Myanmar following the coup d'état; A civil demonstration against the October 2021 coup in Sudan; Crowd shortly after t ...

Germany U21 * UEFA European U21 Championship:

References

External links

* * *
Vitaly Janelt
at brentfordfc.com * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Janelt, Vitaly 1998 births Living people Footballers from Hamburg German footballers Germany youth international footballers Germany under-21 international footballers Association football midfielders RB Leipzig II players RB Leipzig players VfL Bochum players Brentford F.C. players Regionalliga players 2. Bundesliga players English Football League players German expatriate footballers Expatriate footballers in England German expatriate sportspeople in England Premier League players