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

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