Michel Morganella (born 17 May 1989) is a Swiss-Italian 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 lea ...

who plays as a defender for

Chiasso Chiasso (; ) is a Municipalities of Switzerland, municipality in the district of Mendrisio (district), Mendrisio in the Cantons of Switzerland, canton of Ticino in Switzerland. As Extreme points of Switzerland, the southernmost of Switzerland's ...

Football career

Club

;Youth Born to an Italian father and a Swiss mother, Morganella grew up in Chippis, on the boarder to

Sierre Sierre (; ; ) is the capital municipality of the district of Sierre, located in the canton of Valais, Switzerland. It has a population of 18,020. Sierre is nicknamed City of the Sun () for its average of 300 days of sunshine a year. It is t ...

. Morganella started his youth football with local amateur club FC Chippis. After a few years he moved to the youth department of

Sion Sion may refer to * an alternative transliteration of Zion People * Sion (name) or Siôn, a Welsh and other given name and surname, including a list of people and fictional characters with the name * Shion or Sion, a Japanese given name Plac ...

and in August 2004 he moved to the youth department of

FC Basel Fussball Club Basel 1893, widely known as FC Basel, FCB, or just Basel, is a Swiss professional Association football, football club based in Basel, in the Basel-Stadt, Canton of Basel-Stadt. Formed in 1893, the club has been List of Swiss footba ...

. He played in their U-18 team during the 2005–06 season, under coach

Patrick Rahmen Patrick Rahmen (born 3 April 1969) is a Swiss football coach and former player. He played as midfielder or forward. He was most recently the head coach of Young Boys in the Swiss Super League. Club career Patrick Rahmen learned his football s ...

and his assistant

Marco Walker Marco Walker (born 2 May 1970) is a Swiss football manager and a former international who played as a defender during the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s. Club career Walker started his youth football with local club FC Bellach. From 1983 with he was w ...

and with them won both the Swiss U-18 championship and the U-19/18 national cup that season. Thereafter, in summer 2006 he advanced to join their U-21 team and played as a right-back or a wide-right midfielder. ;Basel In the winter break of their 2006–07 season he was brought up to the first team by head coach

Christian Gross Christian Jürgen Gross (born 14 August 1954) is a Swiss football manager and former player. He played as a sweeper and central midfielder. Gross was manager of Basel from 1999 to 2009, winning four Swiss Super Leagues and four Swiss Cups. As ...

. After playing in four test games Morganella played his domestic league debut for the club in the away game in the

Stade Tourbillon The Stade de Tourbillon is a multi-purpose stadium in Sion, Switzerland. It is currently used mostly for football matches and is the home stadium of FC Sion. The stadium holds 16,000 people and was built in 1968 and renovated in 1989. At the t ...

on 25 February 2007, coming on as substitute in the 79th minute, as Basel played a goalless draw with

. He played two further games that season, both over the full 90 minutes. The following season Basel played in the

2007–08 UEFA Cup The 2007–08 UEFA Cup was the 37th edition of the UEFA Europa League, UEFA Cup, UEFA's former second-tier club association football, football tournament. The 2008 UEFA Cup Final, final was played at the City of Manchester Stadium, Manchester, E ...

and in the last match of the group stage, as they played in the

HSH Nordbank Arena Volksparkstadion () is a football stadium in Hamburg, Germany, with a capacity of 57,000, which makes it the eighth largest stadium in Germany. It has served as the home ground of Bundesliga side Hamburger SV since 1953. The Volksparkstadion ...

on 20 December 2007, Morganella came on as substitute replacing

David Degen David Degen (born 15 February 1983) is a former Switzerland, Swiss Association football, footballer who last played for FC Basel, mostly as a right midfielder, in the Swiss Super League. He is half Dutch as his mother is from the Netherlands. His ...

in the 50th minute, after fellow right back Reto Zanni had been shown the second yellow card and been dismissed. The game against

Hamburger SV Hamburger Sport-Verein e.V. (), commonly known as Hamburger SV () or Hamburg (), or HSV (), is a German sports club based in Hamburg, with its largest branch being its Association football, football department. Though the current HSV was founde ...

ended with a 1–1 draw. At the end of their 2007–08 season Morganella won the

Double Double, The Double or Dubble may refer to: Mathematics and computing * Multiplication by 2 * Double precision, a floating-point representation of numbers that is typically 64 bits in length * A double number of the form x+yj, where j^2=+1 * A ...

with the club. They won the

league League or The League may refer to: Arts and entertainment * ''Leagues'' (band), an American rock band * ''The League'', an American sitcom broadcast on FX and FXX about fantasy football * ''League of Legends'', a 2009 multiplayer online battle a ...

championship title with four points advantage over second placed Young Boys. In the

Swiss Cup The Swiss Cup (; ; ; ) is a football cup competition that has been organised annually since 1925–26 season by the Swiss Football Association. The Swiss Cup final is usually the most important game of the year with a high attendance. The co ...

Basel advanced to the final, and winning this 4–1 against

AC Bellinzona AC Bellinzona is a Swiss football club based in Bellinzona. It was founded in 1904, and won the Swiss Super League in 1948. After being folded in 2013 declaring bankruptcy, the team played the Ticino Group of 2.Liga, the sixth tier of the Sw ...

they won the competition. In the first half of their 2008–09 season Morganella had just two league appearances and one in the

Swiss Cup 2008–09 Swiss most commonly refers to: * the adjectival form of Switzerland *Swiss people Swiss may also refer to: Places *Swiss, Missouri * Swiss, North Carolina *Swiss, West Virginia *Swiss, Wisconsin Other uses * Swiss Café, an old café located in ...

. Nevertheless, the club offered Morganella a new contract, to freshen up his expiring deal. On 2 November 2008 they signed a three-year contract which 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 summer 2011. On 9 December Morganella played his Champions League debut in the last matchday of the

group stage A tournament is a competition involving at least three competitors, all participating in a sport or game. More specifically, the term may be used in either of two overlapping senses: # One or more competitions held at a single venue and concentr ...

. He played the full 90 minutes, but Basel were defeated 1–0 by

Sporting CP Sporting Clube de Portugal (), otherwise referred to as Sporting CP or simply Sporting (particularly within Portugal), or as Sporting Lisbon in other countries,

. Following days of speculation about his future,

Basel Basel ( ; ), also known as Basle ( ), ; ; ; . is a city in northwestern Switzerland on the river Rhine (at the transition from the High Rhine, High to the Upper Rhine). Basel is Switzerland's List of cities in Switzerland, third-most-populo ...

announced, on 30 January 2009, that Morganella had left the club. During his time with the club, Morganella played a total of 36 games for Basel's first team, but without scoring a goal. Six of these games were in the

Swiss Super League The Super League (also known as the Credit Suisse Super League for sponsorship reasons) is a professional association football league in Switzerland and the highest level of the Swiss football league system. It has been played in its current fo ...

, one in the

, two in the UEFA competitions ( Champions League and

UEFA Cup The asterisk ( ), from Late Latin , from Ancient Greek , , "little star", is a Typography, typographical symbol. It is so called because it resembles a conventional image of a star (heraldry), heraldic star. Computer scientists and Mathematici ...

) and 27 were friendly games. ;Palermo The same day,

Palermo Palermo ( ; ; , 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 province. The ...

officially announced to have signed Morganella 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 after about 18 months he was eventually loaned out to

Serie B The Serie B (), officially known as Serie 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 season. It had b ...

club

Novara Novara (; Novarese Lombard, Novarese: ) is the capital city of the province of Novara in the Piedmont (Italy), Piedmont region in northwest Italy, to the west of Milan. With 101,916 inhabitants (on 1 January 2021), it is the second most populous ...

in July 2010. ;Novara 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 former Kosovan professional association football, footballer who is the current sports director of the Kosovo national football team, Kosovo national team. Early life Ujkani was born in Resnik, a village near ...

(both tagged for €1.5 million), as part of a bid involving striker

Pablo Andrés González Pablo is a masculine given name, the Spanish form of the name Paul. People * Pablo Acha (born 1996), Spanish archer * Pablo Alarcón (born 1946), Argentine actor * Pablo Alborán (born 1989), Spanish singer * Pablo Aimar (born 1979), Argentine ...

for €5 million. He concluded the season with a historic promotion to

Serie A The Serie A (), officially known as Serie A Enilive in Italy and Serie A Made in Italy abroad for sponsorship reasons, is a professional association football league in Italy and the highest tier of the Italian football league system. Establish ...

. ;Palermo On 22 June 2012,

announced on their website that they had re-acquired the full transfer rights of Morganella and fellow Novara player Ujkani. Morganella returned and then played regularly for Palermo. Morganella's contract expired on 30 June 2018 and he was without an employer. ;Rapperswil-Jona On 26 October 2018, Morganella returned to Switzerland, signing a two-year (semi-professional) 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, Rapperswil-Jona also includes Bollinge ...

. Returning to competition football, Morganella played 7 games up until the end of calendar year 2018. ;Padova On 15 January 2019, Morganella signed with Italian Serie B club

Padova Padua ( ) is a city and ''comune'' (municipality) in Veneto, northern Italy, and the capital of the province of Padua. The city lies on the banks of the river Bacchiglione, west of Venice and southeast of Vicenza, and has a population of ...

. ;Livorno On 10 July 2019, Morganella signed with

Livorno Livorno () is a port city on the Ligurian Sea on the western coast of the Tuscany region of Italy. It is the capital of the Province of Livorno, having a population of 152,916 residents as of 2025. It is traditionally known in English as Leghorn ...

International

Morganella represented Switzerland at various youth levels. He was chosen by

Pierluigi Tami Pierluigi Tami (born 12 September 1961) is the current director of the Switzerland men's national teams. A former football manager and defender, he holds Swiss and Italian citizenship. Career He was in charge of the Switzerland national unde ...

for the

London 2012 Olympics The 2012 Summer Olympics, officially the Games of the XXX Olympiad and also known as London 2012, were an international multi-sport event held from 27 July to 12 August 2012 in London, England, United Kingdom. The first event, the ...

national squad. In advance of the Olympics, Morganella debuted with the senior

Swiss national football team The Switzerland national football team (, , , , ) represents Switzerland in men's international football. The national team is controlled by the Swiss Football Association. Switzerland's best performances at the FIFA World Cup have been three ...

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 countries. He earned 35 international caps for Switzerl ...

in the friendly against

Romania Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central Europe, Central, Eastern Europe, Eastern and Southeast Europe. It borders Ukraine to the north and east, Hungary to the west, Serbia to the southwest, Bulgaria to the south, Moldova to ...

. On 30 July 2012, following the Swiss team's defeat against South Korea, the Swiss Olympic Committee expelled Morganella from the games after he posted on

Twitter Twitter, officially known as X since 2023, is an American microblogging and social networking service. It is one of the world's largest social media platforms and one of the most-visited websites. Users can share short text messages, image ...

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 Championship at U-18 level: 2005–06 * Swiss Cup Winner at U-19/18 level: 2005–06 *

: 2007–08 *

2008 2008 was designated as: *International Year of Languages *International Year of Planet Earth *International Year of the Potato *International Year of Sanitation The Great Recession, a worldwide recession which began in 2007, continued throu ...

Palermo *

champions: 2013–14

References

External links

Profile at FC Basel Archive

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 men's footballers Swiss expatriate sportspeople in Italy FC Sion players FC Basel players Palermo FC players Novara FC players FC Rapperswil-Jona players Calcio Padova players US 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 men's footballers in Italy Men's association football defenders Switzerland men's youth international footballers Switzerland men's international footballers Switzerland men's under-21 international footballers Footballers at the 2012 Summer Olympics Olympic footballers for Switzerland Swiss people of Italian descent Footballers from Valais 21st-century Swiss sportsmen