"If I move to Azerbaijan, I can end my career straight away": a forgotten Gladbach jewel is suddenly knocking on the door of the Champions League and playing international football with his two brothers
Celebrated goalscorer in Gladbach's Under-19s, great hopes on Schalke - but then Joy-Lance Mickels disappeared from view for a long time. Now he could be playing in the Champions League in a few weeks.
When Joy-Lance Mickels decided to move to Azerbaijan in the summer of 2021, plenty of people around him had their doubts. "A lot of my friends said to me: if I move to Azerbaijan, I can end my career straight away, because the move is virtually the same as the end of a career," Mickels recalled around a year and a half later in an interview with Transfermarkt.
Back then, a future in the Azerbaijani league was a long way from what he had once imagined. The attacker had made waves in Borussia Mönchengladbach's academy, ranked among Germany's best scorers at U19 level and dreamed of a Bundesliga career. That has not happened so far, but Mickels may soon realise another ambition, the dream of the Champions League, by taking the scenic route.
Ignoring the doom-mongering from his friends, Mickels moved to Azerbaijan in 2021 and joined Sabah FK, a club only founded a few years earlier. "For some reason, I found the offer exciting, interesting and exotic at the same time. In the end I thought to myself: I only have a short time as a professional footballer. Why not give it a try? Especially as you could, under certain circumstances, take part in the Europa Conference League," he said at the end of 2022, when his international ambitions were still far more modest.
Will Joy-Lance Mickels soon play in the Champions League with Sabah FK?
Now, instead of the Conference League, even the Champions League is within touching distance, with the first leg of the play-off away to Hapoel Beer Sheva awaiting Mickels and co on Wednesday evening (9pm). Either the Israeli champions or Sabah will celebrate a first appearance in the competition next season. Mickels has played a huge part in putting them within reach of meetings with Barcelona, Real Madrid, Bayern Munich, Paris Saint-Germain or Arsenal.
Earlier in July, Sabah had to start in round one of Champions League qualifying, and Mickels scored the crucial opener in the 2-1 away win in the second leg at Welsh serial champions The New Saints. He struck again in round two in the 2-0 second-leg win away to KuPs in Finland. Then came the toughest test so far in round three: Sabah lost the first leg 2-1 at Danish champions Aarhus GF, but blew the tie open with a ferocious 4-0 win in the return leg in front of their own fans. Mickels slipped in the pass for the opener and later scored the relieving third goal himself.
Can the left winger, now 32, finally test himself on the pitch at the very highest level? That had once been his big target as a Gladbach academy prospect.
In 2012/13, he scored 17 goals in his second U19 year in what was then the U19 Bundesliga West. He also caught the eye in an internal friendly against Borussia's Bundesliga side and underlined his eye for goal with a strike. "At that point, I was firmly convinced that I would become part of the first team," Mickels stressed years later.
Instead, he had to try to force his way through via the second team. A knee injury then sidelined him for several months in his first senior year, and he managed only four brief substitute appearances for Gladbach II. New hope arrived with an unexpected call from Gelsenkirchen in the summer of 2014, when Schalke wanted Mickels for their reserve side, with the prospect of more.
Joy-Lance Mickels: training highlights at Schalke, but there was a lack of professionalism
Although he still carried his knee injury with him to S04, he was able to make his first Regionalliga appearances after a few weeks. Roberto Di Matteo, first-team coach at the Royal Blues at the time, was apparently taken by Mickels' qualities and brought him into senior training. "After the first training session, Roberto Di Matteo came up to me and said: you're staying with the pros for now. At that moment, a dream came true for me, also because Schalke are an unbelievably cool club," Mickels looked back.
At that point, Schalke were still one of Germany's top clubs, playing in the Champions League and packed with stars. Training alongside Kevin-Prince Boateng, Klaas-Jan Huntelaar or Benedikt Höwedes had been "magnificent", Mickels enthused.
The breakthrough at S04 never came, though, and he did not make a single competitive appearance. "I wasn't as professional as I should have been," Mickels admits in hindsight. He said it had been mentally tough as a young player to train with the first team but only play in the Regionalliga.
"If I'm honest, I would have needed someone by my side to shake me awake and take me by the hand. Not every academy player can be left on his own. When you're in that bubble as a young player, you take everything for granted. That's often the mistake that is why you fail," Mickels knows today.
By 2016, he had closed the Schalke chapter and tried to earn bigger opportunities through ambitious Regionalliga clubs. Mickels delivered at Alemannia Aachen and Wacker Nordhausen, and at the start of 2020 he reached a third-tier club for the first time with Carl Zeiss Jena.
Joy-Lance Mickels in Azerbaijan: "After two weeks I actually wanted to pack it in"
Following Jena's relegation to the fourth tier, Mickels, now 26, left German football behind in the summer of 2020. A year later, after a season with MVV Maastricht in the Dutch second division, an offer from Azerbaijan finally arrived.
There, the start was tough: "After two weeks I actually wanted to pack it all in. At that point I was still living in a hotel, didn't have a flat in Baku and hardly anyone spoke English," Mickels explained. Sabah FK are based in Masazir, a small town near the multi-million metropolis and Azerbaijani capital Baku.
Only once he moved into a flat in central Baku, got to know the locals properly and settled into the team did everything change. Mickels found his feet in his new home quickly after that. He said he had matured with age and had long since become far more reflective than in his Gladbach or Schalke days: "I used to spend a lot of time on the PlayStation, today I spend a lot of time in the gym and focus on recovery. I also pay attention to good and healthy nutrition."
Things clicked straight away for him at Sabah, where he became a regular immediately and kept scoring. After 28 goal involvements in 35 league games in 2022/23, big money from Saudi Arabia came calling and Mickels moved to Al-Faisaly, then a second-tier club. It went reasonably well, but it was only a short spell and after one year the attacker returned to Azerbaijan.
Will the dream of European football finally come true?
At Sabah, the fans adore him and he has grown attached to the country, the people and the football there. "The league is very robust and physical. The defenders are classic ankle-biters. In every game here, you're physically put under pressure and it gets painful," he says of everyday life in the Premyer Liqa. The young club have improved continuously, but Mickels' dream of a European league phase has still not come true.
In 2024/25, St Patrick's Athletic of Ireland knocked Sabah out in Conference League qualifying. The previous year, as cup winners, Sabah had even been allowed to dream of a place in the Europa League, but even a hat-trick from Mickels against Celje of Slovenia, then still coached by former Frankfurt coach Albert Riera, was not enough to get through qualifying round one.
This time, the biggest success in the club's history so far is supposed to lead straight into the next one. In the spring, Sabah were crowned Azerbaijani champions for the first time, finishing above Qarabag Agdam. That says plenty, given Qarabag reached the intermediate round of the Champions League last season and made headlines in the league phase with 3-2 wins against Eintracht Frankfurt and Benfica, as well as a 2-2 draw against Chelsea.
Domestically, Sabah finished well clear of Qarabag, with nine points separating the two clubs at the end of the season. They also won both league meetings and beat Qarabag in the cup semi-final.
In Sabah's 2-1 home win in the league in December 2025, Mickels scored the equaliser in the meantime. The match-winner, incidentally, was Aaron Malouda, son of former France international Florent Malouda, who spent last season at Sabah and recently moved to Swiss top club Basel.
Joy-Lance Mickels: international alongside his brothers
For Mickels, Sabah may no longer be a springboard in the strictest sense given his advanced footballing age. But alongside the Champions League dream, another landmark from his time in Azerbaijan may mean even more to him personally: at the end of March, Mickels, who has roots in Rwanda, made his international debut for the African country.
Even better, his twin brother Joy-Slayd, who plays for Hibernians FC in Malta, and his brother Leroy, 15 months younger and recently moved from Zira FK in Azerbaijan to third-tier club Waldhof Mannheim, also made their debuts for Rwanda alongside him. Leroy even scored his first two international goals straight away in the friendlies against Grenada (4-0) and Estonia (2-0).
Having already played together for Gladbach's U19s, the three brothers are now doing it on the senior international stage. Joy-Lance Mickels has probably long since forgotten the sceptical comments that greeted his move to Azerbaijan five years ago. He would forget them even faster if, at the start of September, he gets to take in not just the air of Champions League qualifying but the real Champions League atmosphere for the first time.
