Michel Morganella (born 17 May 1989) is a Swiss 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 le ...
who plays as a
defender for
Chiasso
Chiasso (; lmo, Ciass ) is a municipality in the district of Mendrisio in the canton of Ticino in Switzerland.
As the southernmost of Switzerland's municipalities, Chiasso is on the border with Italy, in front of Ponte Chiasso (a frazione of C ...
.
Club career
Born to an Italian father and a Swiss mother, Morganella is a product of the
FC Basel
Fussball Club Basel 1893, widely known as FC Basel, FCB, or just Basel, is a Swiss football club based in Basel, in the Canton of Basel-Stadt. Formed in 1893, the club has been Swiss national champions 20 times, Swiss Cup winners 13 times, and ...
youth system and plays as a right-back or a wide-right midfielder. He first came into the Basel team at the end of the 2006–07 season, playing in three games that campaign. In the 2007–08 campaign he was given the #4 jersey, later starting to be featured on the first team.
Morganella then signed a new three-year contract at Basel, with the club moving quickly to freshen up his expiring deal. This deal was intended to keep him at
St. Jakob-Park
St. Jakob-Park () is a Swiss sports stadium in Basel. It is the largest football venue in Switzerland and home to FC Basel. "Joggeli", as the venue is nicknamed by the locals, was originally built with a capacity of 33,433 seats. The capacity w ...
until 2011.
However, on 30 January 2009, following days of speculation about his future,
Palermo
Palermo ( , ; scn, Palermu , locally also or ) is a city in southern Italy, the capital (political), capital of both the autonomous area, autonomous region of Sicily and the Metropolitan City of Palermo, the city's surrounding metropolitan ...
officially announced to have signed Morganella from
FC Basel
Fussball Club Basel 1893, widely known as FC Basel, FCB, or just Basel, is a Swiss football club based in Basel, in the Canton of Basel-Stadt. Formed in 1893, the club has been Swiss national champions 20 times, Swiss Cup winners 13 times, and ...
on a four-year and a half contract, He thus became the first Swiss footballer to play for the ''rosanero''.
During his early times at Palermo, Morganella never broke into the first team and he was eventually loaned out to
Serie B
The Serie B (), currently named Serie Balkrishna Industries, BKT for sponsorship reasons, is the second-highest division in the Italian football league system after the Serie A. It has been operating for over ninety years since the 1929–30 ...
club
Novara
Novara (, Novarese: ) is the capital city of the province of Novara in the Piedmont region in northwest Italy, to the west of Milan. With 101,916 inhabitants (on 1 January 2021), it is the second most populous city in Piedmont after Turin. It is ...
in July 2010.
On 31 January 2011, Palermo announced to have sold 50% of Morganella's transfer rights to Novara along with
Samir Ujkani
Samir Ujkani (born 5 July 1988) is a Kosovar Albanian professional association football, footballer who plays as a Goalkeeper (association football), goalkeeper for Italian club Empoli F.C., Empoli and the Kosovo national football team, Kosovo nat ...
(both tagged for €1.5 million), as part of a bid involving striker
Pablo Andrés González
Pablo is a Spanish form of the name Paul.
People
* Pablo Alborán, Spanish singer
*Pablo Aimar, Argentine footballer
*Pablo Armero, Colombian footballer
* Pablo Bartholomew, Indian photojournalist
*Pablo Brandán, Argentine footballer
*Pablo Brene ...
for €5 million. He concluded the season with a historic promotion to
Serie A
The Serie A (), also called Serie A TIM for national sponsorship with TIM, is a professional league competition for football clubs located at the top of the Italian football league system and the winner is awarded the Scudetto and the Coppa ...
.
On 22 June 2012, Palermo announced on their website that they had re-acquired the full transfer rights of Morganella and fellow Novara player Ujkani.
On 26 October 2018, he returned to Switzerland, signing a two-year contract with
Rapperswil-Jona
Rapperswil-Jona is a municipality in the ''Wahlkreis'' (constituency) of See-Gaster in the canton of St. Gallen in Switzerland.
Besides Rapperswil and Jona, which were separate municipalities until 2006, the municipality includes Bollingen, Bussk ...
. Coming back at the competition, he played 7 games before the end of 2018.
On 15 January 2019, Morganella signed with Italian Serie B club
Padova
Padua ( ; it, Padova ; vec, Pàdova) is a city and ''comune'' in Veneto, northern Italy. Padua is on the river Bacchiglione, west of Venice. It is the capital of the province of Padua. It is also the economic and communications hub of the ...
.
On 10 July 2019, he signed with
Livorno
Livorno () is a port city on the Ligurian Sea on the western coast of Tuscany, Italy. It is the capital of the Province of Livorno, having a population of 158,493 residents in December 2017. It is traditionally known in English as Leghorn (pronou ...
.
International career
Morganella debuted with the senior
Swiss national football team
The Switzerland national football team (german: Schweizer Fussballnationalmannschaft, it, Nazionale di calcio della Svizzera, french: Équipe nationale suisse de football, rm, Squadra naziunala da ballape da la Svizra) represents Switzerland ...
on 30 May 2012, replacing
Reto Ziegler
Reto Pirmin Ziegler (born 16 January 1986) is a Swiss professional footballer who plays as a left-back for Swiss Super League club Sion.
Ziegler has played top-flight football in seven different countries. He earned 35 international caps for ...
in the friendly against
Romania
Romania ( ; ro, România ) is a country located at the crossroads of Central Europe, Central, Eastern Europe, Eastern, and Southeast Europe, Southeastern Europe. It borders Bulgaria to the south, Ukraine to the north, Hungary to the west, S ...
.
He was chosen by
Pierluigi Tami
Pierluigi Tami (born 12 September 1961) is a Swiss football manager and a former defender. He also holds Italian citizenship.
Career
He was in charge of the Switzerland national under-21 football team, and also worked as an assistant to coach O ...
for the
London 2012 Olympics
The 2012 Summer Olympics (officially the Games of the XXX Olympiad and also known as London 2012) was an international multi-sport event held from 27 July to 12 August 2012 in London, England, United Kingdom. The first event, the ...
national squad.
On 30 July 2012, following the Swiss team's defeat to South Korea, the Swiss Olympic Committee expelled
Morganella from the games after he posted on
Twitter
Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...
a message translating to "I am going to batter the Koreans, burn them all... bunch of
Mongoloid
Mongoloid () is an obsolete racial grouping of various peoples indigenous to large parts of Asia, the Americas, and some regions in Europe and Oceania. The term is derived from a now-disproven theory of biological race. In the past, other terms ...
s."
Morganella later apologized.
Honours
Basel
* Swiss Champion at U-18 level: 2005–06
* Swiss Cup Winner at U-19/U-18 level: 2005–06
References
External links
Profile at FC Basel
Profile at Swiss Football League
*
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Morganella, Michel
1989 births
Living people
People from Sierre
Swiss men's footballers
Swiss expatriate footballers
Swiss expatriate sportspeople in Italy
FC Sion players
FC Basel players
Palermo F.C. players
Novara F.C. players
FC Rapperswil-Jona players
Calcio Padova players
U.S. Livorno 1915 players
FC Chiasso players
Swiss Super League players
Serie A players
Serie B players
Swiss Challenge League players
Swiss Promotion League players
Expatriate footballers in Italy
Association football defenders
Switzerland youth international footballers
Switzerland international footballers
Switzerland under-21 international footballers
Footballers at the 2012 Summer Olympics
Anti-South Korean sentiment
Olympic footballers of Switzerland
Swiss people of Italian descent
Sportspeople from Valais