Michael John Lema

Michael John Lema
Michael John Lema (2019)
Personnel
birthday	September 13, 1999
place of birth	Tanzania
size	171 cm
position	midfield player
Juniors
Years	station
2008-2013	SV Tristach
2012-2013	→ Rapid Lienz FC (cooperation)
2013-2017	SK Sturm Graz
Men's
Years	station	Games (goals) 1
2016-2019	SK Sturm Graz II	47 (23)
2017–	SK Sturm Graz	23 0(3)
2020–	→  TSV Hartberg  (loan)	2 0(0)
National team
Years	selection	Games (goals) 2
2017	Austria U-18	1 0(0)
2017	Austria U-19	3 0(1)
2019–	Austria U-21	4 0(0)
1 Only league games are given. Status: February 23, 2020 2 As of October 15, 2019

Michael John Lema (born September 13, 1999 in Tanzania ) is an Austrian- Tanzanian football player on the position of midfielder . In 2018 he made his debut for the professional team of SK Sturm Graz in the Austrian Bundesliga .

Career

society

Michael John Lema was born on September 13, 1999 in Tanzania and came to East Tyrol for the first time in 2007 while on a family vacation . His family had decided on this vacation because an acquaintance of their mother's had lived here for years. After returning to Tanzania, around 6,000 kilometers away, Lema returned to Austria several times over the next two years and was registered for the first time in the junior division of SV Tristach in the municipality of Tristach near Lienz in August 2008 . Lema did not come to Austria for good until 2009, at the age of ten, but left his parents in Tanzania. He was taken in by his mother's acquaintance in East Tyrol and from then on attended the Lienz Süd elementary school. He later attended grammar school in Lienz for several years and took regular leave from home with his parents in Tanzania.

In Tristach he stood out because of his enormous risk of goals; he scored 69 goals in 23 appearances for the U-10 team in his first season (2008/09). In 2009/10 he was promoted to the U-12 team and scored 14 goals in 13 missions in autumn and 23 goals in 12 missions in spring. In the following season 2010/11 Lema was still a member of the U-12 squad and was used as a regular. In the spring he showed up again with 37 goals in nine league games. At the same time, he also played in the club's U-14 team in 2010/11, for which he scored seven goals in the fall of 2010 and was the team's second-best goalscorer with 16 goals from 14 games the following spring. In the 2011/12 season he dueled again with his teammate Florian Unterweger for the title of the team's top scorer when, after 19 goals in all ten games in autumn, he scored twelve goals in seven games in the following spring and was thus able to secure this title .

In 2012, Lema, who had already played street football in his home country as a child, switched to the Rapid Lienz cooperative association and was active there for over a season until the summer of 2013. At the club, whose men's team was represented in the Carinthian League at that time , he was used in all 14 games of the U-14 team in autumn and was extremely dangerous with 20 goals scored. With twelve wins, one draw and one defeat, the team became U-14 autumn champions. In the spring he also played all 14 league games and scored 16 goals. In the final standings it was only enough for the team for third place in the table. As he stood out due to his performance, he subsequently switched to the junior division of the Austrian Bundesliga club SK Sturm Graz in the summer of 2013 . Here he was initially in the U-15 team of the Steiermark-Sturm Graz Academy and was the team's second-best goalscorer with 16 goals from 20 league games behind Mark Grosse. With the U-15 academy team, he won the Austrian final of the Nike Premier Cup 2014 , scored all three goals in the 3-0 final victory and qualified with the team for the European final. After that, Lema, who would have actually already switched to the youth team of FC Red Bull Salzburg but then stayed in Graz, also played in the world finals, the Manchester United Premier Cup , against youth teams from top international clubs after the successful European final in August 2014 . He also made four league appearances and one goal for the U-16 academy team in Graz.

In the 2014/15 season, in addition to 14 missions with eight goals for the U-16 team, he also made seven for him personally goalless appearances for the U-18s. Especially from the end of September 2015, the native Tanzanian came to regular assignments for the U-18 team in the ÖFB U-18 youth league. By the end of the season he was used in 17 games and scored five goals. In 2015/16, the winger was promoted to the Graz amateur team with play in the third- tier regional league center . On August 26, 2016, he made his debut in a 1-1 home draw against SPG FC Pasching / LASK Juniors in men's football, when he was sent to the field as central defender for Ervin Bevab in the 86th minute by coach Markus Schopp . A month later at the latest, he was already making regular appearances for the amateur team, and on October 11, 2016 , he was the first scorer in a 6-1 defeat against TSV Hartberg . At this point he was already in the right midfield or, more precisely, on the right wing. On the way to becoming a regular player, Lema scored six goals in 18 championship games and was also featured in five games for the U-18 team, in which he also scored six goals. In the following season 2017/18 Lema advanced to become a regular in the second combat team of the Graz team; but was especially from the eleventh championship round increasingly with the amateurs and was used alternately in the left and right midfield. By the end of the season, he made 17 league appearances and four hits.

With the professionals, he was in the first round of the championship, in the 3-2 home win over SKN St. Pölten , in the squad, but was not used from the bench. In the following game against Vienna Austria he sat on the bench and trained most of the time with the professionals or was out for a few weeks due to injury. On March 21, 2018, the native Tanzanian signed his first professional contract and made his debut three days later in the 1: 2 friendly defeat against NK Maribor for the professional team. He was also on the bench in Graz's two games in the third qualifying round of the 2017/18 UEFA Europa League against Fenerbahçe Istanbul . On May 27, 2018, he made his debut in the last season game of the professional team against SCR Altach , when he was sent onto the pitch by coach Heiko Vogel in the 71st minute for Jakob Jantscher .

In the 2018/19 season, Lema made a total of 16 games. Towards the end of the season, under coach Roman Mählich , Lema played a few games from the start. In the autumn 2019/20 season, Lema was hardly ever used. In January 2020 it was awarded to league competitor TSV Hartberg .

National team

Lema made his debut in an Austrian national team on March 23, 2017, when he made his debut in a 1-1 draw in a friendly international match of the Austrian U-18 team against his age colleagues from the defeats when he was coached by Andreas Heraf in the 77th minute of play for Christoph Baumgartner was substituted on. In the summer of 2017 he was supposed to be nominated for the Austrian U-19 juniors squad, but during this time he was out due to an injury and only made his U-19 debut a few months later. Under coach Peter Schöttel , the now 18-year-old took part in the qualification for the U-19 European Football Championship 2018 and completed all three games in Group 6 of the qualifying round in October 2017. Among other things, he scored a goal in the 1-0 win over the Kosovar U-19 juniors after submission by the aforementioned Christoph Baumgartner. With the Austrians, he made it into the subsequent elite round of qualification as group winners. After he had not participated in the preparation for this, he was not part of the team in the elite round held in March 2018. In the elite round, Austria only reached third place in Group 7 and could not qualify for the final round in Finland in July 2018 .

In June 2019 he made his debut against France for the Austrian U-21 team .

Web links

Commons : Michael John Lema  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Michael John Lema in the database of weltfussball.de
• Michael John Lema in the database of transfermarkt.de
• Michael John Lema in the database of fussballoesterreich.at
• Michael John Lema in the ÖFB database

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Along the black thread , accessed on May 27, 2018
2. ↑ Conquer the world quickly , accessed on May 27, 2018
3. ↑ U16 at the world finals: Wages for hard work , accessed on May 27, 2018
4. ↑ Manchester United Premier Cup U-15 2014 on the official website of the Rec.Sport.Soccer Statistics Foundation , accessed on May 27, 2018
5. ↑ ^{a b} BLACK AND WHITE TALENTS FOR AUSTRIA , accessed on May 27, 2018
6. ↑ Michael John Lema receives professional contract with Sturm Graz , accessed on May 27, 2018
7. ↑ The SK Sturm extended with a goalkeeper , accessed on May 27, 2018
8. ↑ Storm is subject to Maribor in the test , accessed on May 27, 2018
9. ↑ Michael John Lema first winter entry tsv-hartberg-fussball.at, on December 16, 2019, accessed on December 16, 2019
10. ↑ Austria U-18 - Netherlands U-18 (1: 1) , accessed on May 27, 2018
11. ↑ LEMA SHOOTS U19 TEAM TO VICTORY , accessed on May 27, 2018