Mikel Janku (25 December 1941 – 10 January 2019) was an

Albania Albania ( ; or ), officially the Republic of Albania (), is a country in Southeast Europe. It is located in the Balkans, on the Adriatic Sea, Adriatic and Ionian Seas within the Mediterranean Sea, and shares land borders with Montenegro to ...

n retired

football Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kick (football), kicking a football (ball), ball to score a goal (sports), goal. Unqualified, football (word), the word ''football'' generally means the form of football t ...

player, who was a

goalkeeper In many team sports that involve scoring goal (sport), 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 i ...

for Partizani Tiranë and the Albania national team between 1962–1969 and 1964–1967, respectively.

Club career

Janku was trained from 1958 as a helicopter pilot in Rostov,

Soviet Union The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

, and played for army club Partizani on his return to Albania.

International career

He made his debut for

in a May 1964

FIFA World Cup qualification The FIFA World Cup qualification is a set of competitive matches that a national association football team plays in order to qualify for one of the available berths at the final tournament of the men's FIFA World Cup. Qualifying tournaments ar ...

match away against the

Netherlands , Terminology of the Low Countries, informally Holland, is a country in Northwestern Europe, with Caribbean Netherlands, overseas territories in the Caribbean. It is the largest of the four constituent countries of the Kingdom of the Nether ...

and earned a total of 9 caps, scoring no goals. His final international was a May 1967 European Championship qualification match against

Yugoslavia , common_name = Yugoslavia , life_span = 1918–19921941–1945: World War II in Yugoslavia#Axis invasion and dismemberment of Yugoslavia, Axis occupation , p1 = Kingdom of SerbiaSerbia , flag_p ...

Personal life

Janku later became a sports journalist for Sport Express and died in January 2019.

Honours

* Albanian Superliga: 2 ::

1963 Events January * January 1 – Bogle–Chandler case: Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation scientist Dr. Gilbert Bogle and Mrs. Margaret Chandler are found dead (presumed poisoned), in bushland near the Lane Cove ...

1964 Events January * January 1 – The Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland is dissolved. * January 5 – In the first meeting between leaders of the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches since the fifteenth century, Pope Paul VI and Patria ...

Albania - Championship Winning Teams
- RSSSF

References

External links

* 1941 births 2019 deaths Men's association football goalkeepers Albanian men's footballers Albania men's international footballers FK Partizani Tirana players Kategoria Superiore players 20th-century Albanian sportsmen {{Albania-footy-goalkeeper-stub