Felipe Rodrigues da Silva (born 30 June 2001), commonly known as Morato, is a Brazilian 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

centre-back In the sport of association football, a defender is an outfield position whose primary role is to stop attacks during the game and prevent the opposition from scoring. Centre-backs are usually positioned in pairs, with one full-back on either s ...

for Portuguese club Benfica of

Primeira Liga The Primeira Liga (; English: Premier League, also written as Liga Portugal 1), also known as Liga Portugal Bwin for sponsorship reasons, is the top level of the Portuguese football league system. Organised and supervised by the Liga Portugal, ...

Club career

Born in

Francisco Morato Francisco Morato is a suburban city in the state of São Paulo in Brazil. It is part of the Metropolitan Region of São Paulo. The population is 177,633 (2020 est.) in an area of . The suburban city is served by the CPTM , owner ...

in the

state of São Paulo State may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Literature * ''State Magazine'', a monthly magazine published by the U.S. Department of State * ''The State'' (newspaper), a daily newspaper in Columbia, South Carolina, United States * ''Our S ...

, Morato was 18 when he moved from the youth ranks of

São Paulo São Paulo (, ; Portuguese for 'Saint Paul') is the most populous city in Brazil, and is the capital of the state of São Paulo, the most populous and wealthiest Brazilian state, located in the country's Southeast Region. Listed by the GaWC a ...

to Benfica in September 2019, on a contract lasting until 2024. The transfer fee was €6 million and the Brazilian club retained 15% of the rights to his next transfer. On 22 September 2019, Morato made his professional debut for Benfica B in the

LigaPro The Liga Portugal 2 (), also known as Liga Portugal 2 SABSEG for sponsorship reasons, is the second-highest division of the Portuguese football league system. At the end of each season, the two top-finishing teams are promoted to the top-tier Prim ...

, playing the full 90 minutes of a 1–0 loss at

Leixões The Port of Leixões ( pt, Porto de Leixões, ) is one of Portugal's major seaports, located 4 km north of the mouth of the Douro River, in Matosinhos municipality, near the city of Porto Porto or Oporto () is the second-largest city i ...

. He made his first-team debut on 21 December in the final game of the

Taça da Liga The Taça da Liga (), known outside Portugal as Portuguese League Cup, is an annual football club competition organised by the Liga Portuguesa de Futebol Profissional (LPFP) for teams competing in the Primeira Liga and LigaPro, the top two tier ...

group stage, again featuring for the entirety of a 2–2 draw at

Vitória de Setúbal Vitoria or Vitória may refer to : People * Francisco de Vitoria (c. 1483–1546), a Spanish Renaissance theologian * Alberto Vitoria (1956–2010), Spanish footballer * Rui Vitória (born 1970), Portuguese retired footballer * Steven Vitória (b ...

. In the same season, he played 10 games as the under-19 team came runners-up in the

UEFA Youth League The UEFA Youth League is an annual club football competition organised by the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) since 2013. In its current format, it is contested by the youth teams of the clubs competing in the UEFA Champions League ...

, scoring in a 3–2 group win at

Olympique Lyonnais Olympique Lyonnais (), commonly referred to as simply Lyon () or OL, is a men and women's French professional football club based in Lyon in Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes. The men play in France's highest football division, Ligue 1. Founded in 1950, th ...

on 5 November. On 27 September 2020, Morato scored his first professional goal to open a 2–1 loss for the reserves at

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; on 17 October he was sent off in a 1–0 loss away to Arouca. He made his

debut the following 30 April in a 2–0 win at

Tondela Tondela () is a municipality in the central Portuguese subregion of Dão-Lafões. The population in 2011 was 28,946, in an area of 371.22 km². History Local writer and intellectual Amadeu Ferraz de Carvalho (1876–1951) wrote of the munic ...

, as an added-time substitute for Pizzi. On 23 May, he started in the

2021 Taça de Portugal final The 2021 Taça de Portugal Final was the last match of the 2020–21 Taça de Portugal, which decided the winner of the 81st edition of the Taça de Portugal, the premier knockout competition in Portuguese football. It was played on 23 May 2021 at ...

, lost 2–0 to

Braga Braga ( , ; cel-x-proto, Bracara) is a city and a municipality, capital of the northwestern Portuguese district of Braga and of the historical and cultural Minho Province. Braga Municipality has a resident population of 193,333 inhabitants (in ...

Coimbra Coimbra (, also , , or ) is a city and a municipality in Portugal. The population of the municipality at the 2011 census was 143,397, in an area of . The fourth-largest urban area in Portugal after Lisbon, Porto Metropolitan Area, Porto, and Bra ...

; he had days earlier been told that he would be on the bench for that game. Morato was given a run in the first team at the start of the 2021–22 season, due to injury to veteran

Jan Vertonghen Jan Bert Lieve Vertonghen (born 24 April 1987) is a Belgian professional footballer who plays for Belgian club Anderlecht and the Belgium national team. Mainly a central defender, he can also play as a left-back. Vertonghen began his senior car ...

. He scored his first goal for them on 2 November, in the first half of a 5–2 loss at

Bayern Munich Fußball-Club Bayern München e. V. (FCB, ), also known as FC Bayern (), Bayern Munich, or simply Bayern, is a German professional sports club based in Munich, Bavaria. It is best known for its professional men's football team, which pla ...

in the

UEFA Champions League The UEFA Champions League (abbreviated as UCL, or sometimes, UEFA CL) is an annual club football competition organised by the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) and contested by top-division European clubs, deciding the competit ...

group stage. The following season, under new manager Roger Schmidt, Morato earned a place in the starting eleven over Jan Vertoghen, and following a run of four consecutive wins and three clean sheets, he was named the Primeira Liga's Defender of the Month for August.

International career

Morato was called up in November 2019 to the

Brazil national under-20 football team The Brazil national under-20 football team, also known as Brazil Sub-20 or Seleção Sub-20, represents Brazil in association football at this age level and is controlled by the Brazilian Football Confederation, Brazilian Football ...

, for games against

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and

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Career statistics

Club

Honours

Benfica *

2022–23 The dash is a punctuation mark consisting of a long horizontal line. It is similar in appearance to the hyphen but is longer and sometimes higher from the baseline. The most common versions are the endash , generally longer than the hyphen b ...

Supertaça Cândido de Oliveira The Supertaça Cândido de Oliveira (; English: Cândido de Oliveira Super Cup, or simply Portuguese Super Cup) is an annual Portuguese football match played since 1979 between the winners of the Portuguese League (Primeira Liga) and Portuguese ...

2023 Events Predicted and scheduled events * January 1 ** In the United States, books, films, and other works published in 1927 will enter the public domain, assuming there are no changes made to copyright law. ** Croatia will adopt the eu ...

Taça de Portugal The Taça de Portugal (; "Cup of Portugal") is an annual association football competition and the premier knockout tournament in Portuguese football. For sponsorship reasons, it has been known as Taça de Portugal Placard since the 2015–16 seaso ...

runner-up:

2020–21 The dash is a punctuation mark consisting of a long horizontal line. It is similar in appearance to the hyphen but is longer and sometimes higher from the baseline. The most common versions are the endash , generally longer than the hyphen b ...

runner-up: 2021–22 Individual *

Defender of the Month: August 2022

References

External links

Profile
at the S.L. Benfica website {{DEFAULTSORT:Morato 2001 births Living people Footballers from São Paulo (state) Brazilian men's footballers Brazilian expatriate men's footballers Men's association football central defenders São Paulo FC players S.L. Benfica footballers S.L. Benfica B players Primeira Liga players Liga Portugal 2 players Brazilian expatriate sportspeople in Portugal Expatriate men's footballers in Portugal