Branislav Niňaj (born 17 May 1994) is a Slovak 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 lea ...

who plays as a defender for

Liga I Liga I (; ''First League''), also spelled as Liga 1 and officially known as SuperLiga for sponsorship reasons, is a professional association football league in Romania and the highest level of the Romanian football league system. Contested by 1 ...

club

Sepsi OSK Sepsi may refer to: *László Sepsi (born 1986), Romanian footballer of Hungarian descent *Sepsi-78, a football club from Seinäjoki, Finland *ACS Sepsi SIC ACS Sepsi SIC Sfântu Gheorghe or commonly Sepsi SIC is a women's basketball professional ...

Early career

In summer 2012, he moved from Petržalka 1898 to the fellow Bratislava team Slovan Bratislava. He made his Corgoň Liga debut for Slovan 2013 against ViOn Zlaté Moravce on 1 March 2013, Slovan won this match 4–1.

International career

Niňaj made an unexpected international debut under Ján Kozák on 19 November 2013 in a memorable first

UEFA The Union of European Football Associations (UEFA ; ; ) is one of six continental bodies of governance in association football. It governs football, futsal and beach soccer, beach football in Europe and the List of transcontinental countries#A ...

-recognised match against

Gibraltar Gibraltar ( , ) is a British Overseas Territories, British Overseas Territory and British overseas cities, city located at the southern tip of the Iberian Peninsula, on the Bay of Gibraltar, near the exit of the Mediterranean Sea into the A ...

( 0–0), when he tactically replaced

Jakub Sylvestr Jakub Sylvestr (born 2 February 1989) is a Slovak professional footballer who plays as a forward. He made six appearances for the Slovakia national team. Career Sylvestr scored his first hat-trick in a match against Tatran Prešov on 4 April ...

in the 85th minute. However, he failed to make another appearance under Kozák until his resignation in October 2018. After Niňaj joined

Fortuna Sittard Fortuna Sittard (; ) is a professional football club from the municipality of Sittard-Geleen, Netherlands. The club currently plays its football in the 12,500 capacity Fortuna Sittard Stadion and features in the Eredivisie. The club was establi ...

, where he experienced an incomparably more successful

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 axial tilt, tilted orbit around the Sun. In temperat ...

to the previous ones, he was again nominated to the national team, initially as an alternate. Niňaj's first nomination to the national team nomination after over 5 years happened on 28 May 2019 when coach

Pavel Hapal Pavel Hapal (born 27 July 1969) is a Czech former footballer and coach of Baník Ostrava. Playing career As a footballer, Hapal played for Dukla Prague, CD Tenerife, Sparta Prague, and SK Dynamo České Budějovice. At international level, he ...

called him up for a double fixture in June - a home friendly against

Jordan Jordan, officially the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, is a country in the Southern Levant region of West Asia. Jordan is bordered by Syria to the north, Iraq to the east, Saudi Arabia to the south, and Israel and the occupied Palestinian ter ...

, to which, unusually, 29 players were called-up and a

UEFA Euro 2020 qualifying The UEFA Euro 2020 qualifying tournament was a football competition that was played from March 2019 to November 2020 to determine the 24 UEFA member men's national teams that advanced to the UEFA Euro 2020 final tournament, intended to be playe ...

fixture against

Azerbaijan Azerbaijan, officially the Republic of Azerbaijan, is a Boundaries between the continents, transcontinental and landlocked country at the boundary of West Asia and Eastern Europe. It is a part of the South Caucasus region and is bounded by ...

, played away on 11 June 2019. The squad was to be reduced to 23 players for the latter fixture.

Career statistics

International

Honours

Slovan Bratislava *

Slovak Super Liga The Slovak First Football League (), officially known as Niké liga for sponsorship reasons, is a professional association football league in Slovakia and the highest level of the Football in Slovakia, Slovak football league system. It was formed ...

2012–13 1 (one, unit, unity) is a number, numeral, and glyph. It is the first and smallest positive integer of the infinite sequence of natural numbers. This fundamental property has led to its unique uses in other fields, ranging from science to sp ...

, 2013–14 *

Slovak Cup The Slovak Cup (), currently named Slovnaft Cup due to sponsorship agreement with Slovnaft, is the only nationwide Single-elimination tournament, knockout competition in Football in Slovakia, Slovak football. The winner qualifies for the UEFA Euro ...

Slovak Super Cup The Slovak Super Cup (''Slovenský Superpohár'' in Slovak), in the past named as or , was a match between the champion of the Slovak First Football League and winner of the Slovak Cup. The match was played annually besides years when a club cl ...

: 2014 Sepsi OSK *

Cupa României The Cupa României () is a Association football, football cup competition for List of football clubs in Romania, Romanian teams which has been held annually since 1933–34 Cupa României, 1933–34, except during World War II. It is the Romania ...

: 2021–22,

2022–23 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 ...

Supercupa României The Supercupa României () is a Romanian football (soccer), football championship contested by the winners of the Liga I and the Cupa României. It is usually played at the Arena Națională in Bucharest. The competition started off in 1994 Supe ...

2022 The year began with another wave in the COVID-19 pandemic, with SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant, Omicron spreading rapidly and becoming the dominant variant of the SARS-CoV-2 virus worldwide. Tracking a decrease in cases and deaths, 2022 saw ...

External links

References

Living people 1994 births Footballers from Bratislava Slovak men's footballers Slovakia men's international footballers Slovakia men's youth international footballers Slovakia men's under-21 international footballers Men's association football defenders FC Petržalka players ŠK Slovan Bratislava players K.S.C. Lokeren Oost-Vlaanderen players Ankaraspor footballers MŠK Žilina players Fortuna Sittard players Sepsi OSK Sfântu Gheorghe players 2. Liga (Slovakia) players Slovak First Football League players Belgian Pro League players Süper Lig players Eredivisie players Liga I players Expatriate men's footballers in Belgium Slovak expatriate sportspeople in Belgium Expatriate men's footballers in Turkey Slovak expatriate sportspeople in Turkey Expatriate men's footballers in the Netherlands Slovak expatriate sportspeople in the Netherlands Expatriate men's footballers in Romania Slovak expatriate sportspeople in Romania 21st-century Slovak sportsmen {{Slovakia-footy-defender-stub