On this day in 1990, ex-Sunderland winger Kazenga LuaLua was born in Kinshasa in the DR Congo. His tenure in red and white was during a turbulent time, but he didn’t feature enough to have any real impact.
LuaLua moved from Africa to England at a young age as his brother, Lomana LuaLua, actually signed for the Mags as a part of the youth setup. So, Kazenga and his family moved up to the North East to support his brother, just unfortunately on the wrong side of it for now. The winger also joined Newcastle’s Academy after moving to the country, and over the years he would gradually make his way into the reserve team.
He made his professional debut for Newcastle in the FA Cup against Birmingham City on the 6th of January 2007, and he made his Premier League debut later that month against Bolton Wanderers at St James’ Park, he came on as a substitute both times.
The Congolese forward was sent out on loan to Doncaster Rovers, but only featured four times that season. After his unsuccessful loan spell with Rovers, the forward would be loaned out to Brighton who were in League One at the time. Ironically they were managed by future Sunderland manager Gus Poyet at the time.
He had three loan spells at the Seagulls, before finally signing on a permanent in 2011 for £1.15m. The winger gave Brighton several years of loyal service, despite him not always being in the first team.
On the 25th of January 2018 Kazenga LuaLua joined Sunderland on a short term deal, this was after his contract was cancelled by Brighton. Sunderland manager at the time Chris Coleman described the winger as “quick and skillful”, but he would only go on to make six appearances for the Black Cats (all off the bench) before leaving on a free in the summer. In fact, when LuaLua was finally going to start a game, on the last day of the season against Wolves, he actually got injured in the warm-up. So he missed out on one of our few positive days from that season, and left the club having failed to start a game for us.
Following his release in 2018, the 27-year-old linked back up with Nathan Jones, a man who he knew well from his Brighton days (Jones was caretaker while LuaLua was at Brighton). The free agent trained with The Hatters before putting pen to paper on the 26th of September and signing for the club. LuaLua went on to win promotion from League One and make several Championship appearances, before leaving the club for Turkish second division side Genclerbirligi in 2021.
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