Monarcas Morelia

Full name	Club Atlético Monarcas Morelia
Nickname(s)	Monarcas (Monarchs) La Monarquia (The Monarchy) Los Purepechas Los Canarios
Founded	November 21st, 1924
Ground	Estadio Morelos Morelia, Michoacán, Mexico (Capacity: 41,056)
Owner	TV Azteca
Chairman	Álvaro Dávila
Manager	Tomás Boy
League	Primera División de México
Apertura 2009	1st (league) pattern_la1=
Home colours Away colours Third colours

Club Atlético Monarcas Morelia is a Mexican professional football club. Monarcas Morelia plays in the Mexican First Division. The team is owned by the TV broadcasting company TV Azteca. Monarcas Morelia is based in Morelia, Michoacán, and plays its home games in Estadio Morelos.

[edit] Honours

• First Division: 1
  • Invierno 2000
    • Runner-up
      • Apertura 2002
      • Clausura 2003
• Second Division: 1
  • 1981
• CONCACAF Champions' Cup Runner Up: 2
  • 2002, 2003
• Copa Pachuca: 1
  • 2001
    • Runner up
      • 1999
• Copa Mexico
  • Runner up
    • 1964-1965

[edit] History

Club Atlético Monarcas Morelia was founded November 21, 1924, as Atlético Monarcas Morelia in Morelia, Michoacán.

Atlético Morelia

In 1951, Club Atlético Morelia are officially promoted into the Primera División after having a successful run through the Segunda División & defeating Puebla, receiving a designated spot for promotion to the Primera División. After an unsuccessful season, in 1967, Monarcas Morelia was relegated back to the Segunda División. During a mixed 1968-1971 seasons, C.A. Monarcas appointed a new manager who goes by the name Nicandro Ortiz, who helped the team

positively merge and acquisite a strong position in the Primera División A leaderboard. During the same year, the archaic change of the foundation's name was replaced with today's current name, Club Atlético Monarcas Morelia.

The 1979 clausura season gave Morelia a positive thrust towards contendership, being on a good position for promotion; during the year 1980, Monarcas Morelia played under the direction of general manager Diego Malta who in turn, helped his team towards the Mexican Championship and finally promotion to the Primera División de México. It was said the team would be sold after the 2009 season it will not be sold now.

In 1996 the major broadcast company Tv Azteca bought the team. In 1999, the team changed its name to "Club Atletico Monarcas Morelia" or simply "Monarcas Morelia".

Despite that the team had a history of 70 years playing in Mexican professional soccer the Club Monarcas Morelia had never won a first division tournament. This changed on a day in Winter 2000, when the club raised the cup after beating the Club Toluca in a series of penalty kicks. Unfortunately and because the final is played in two stadiums Morelia was crowned in the Bombonera Stadium and not in Morelia. The Morelos Stadium has never seem its team actually winning the final. The day after the victory a crowd which some estimate was of 100 thousand people welcomed the team as it parade it through Morelia's main avenue avenida Madero. Later they arrived to the stadium where the crowd congregated as the team raised the cup and all the fans congratulated the team for their first ever championship in first division.

Monarcas Morelia has played two other finals (Clausura 2002, Apertura 2003) which they lost to Toluca and Monterrey respectively.

Tomás Boy was hired as their new mangager in February 2009, replacing Luis Fernando Tena.

After missing the playoffs for three straight tournament, Morelia ended up in third place in thr general table in the Apertura 2009. Morelia defeated Santos Laguna in the first round in a 4–2 aggregate. Morelia was defeated by Cruz Azul in the semi-finals with a 2–1 aggregate score.

[edit] Stadium

Monarcas Morelia Stadium Estadio Morelos

Towards the end of the 1980s it was decided that their stadium (Estadio Venustiano Carranza) was lacking capacity and that a new stadium with a greater number of seats needed to be constructed. On April 9, 1989, after several construction delays, Stadium Jose Maria Morelos and Pavón (located on the outskirts of the Quinceo mountain) was opened, and the inaugural game was between Atletico Morelia and Club America (who are Morelia's main rivals). The stadium has an official capacity of 45,000, although on inauguration in 1989 it is estimated that more than 50,000 were in attendance.

[edit] Players

Morelia has had some notable players in their history. Marco Antonio Figueroa is the club's all-time leading scorer with 130 goals. Adolfo Bautista, Rafael Márquez Lugo and Moisés Muñoz are some of the players that were called up to the Mexican national team while playing with the team. They were part of Gold Cup, Confederations Cup, and Summer Olympic Games squads for Mexico.

[edit] Current squad

As of December 28, 2009.^[1][2][3]

No. Position Player 1 GK Diego Orduña 2 DF Enrique Pérez 3 DF Jaime Durán 4 DF Luis Fernando Silva 5 MF Wilson Tiago 6 MF Ismael Pineda 8 MF Jorge Gastelum 9 FW Miguel Sabah 10 MF Mario Antonio Moreno 11 MF Hugo Droguett 13 DF Fernando Salazar 14 DF Marvin Cabrera 15 FW Sergio Blancas 16 MF Adrián Aldrete 17 DF Juan Carlos Pastrana

No. Position Player 18 FW Luis Gabriel Rey 19 GK Carlos Rodríguez 20 MF Pedro Beltran 21 MF José Rosas 23 GK Moisés Muñoz 25 GK Sergio Arturo Pérez 26 DF Mauricio Romero (Captain) 27 MF Jorge Hernández 31 DF Marcos Urbina 35 DF Jesús Castillo 77 MF Elias Hernández 81 MF Aldo Ramírez — FW Jared Borgetti — MF Gabriel Pereyra (On loan from Atlante) — DF Christian Sánchez

[edit] Notable former players

This list of former players includes those who received international caps while playing for the team, made significant contributions to the team in terms of appearances or goals while playing for the team, or who made significant contributions to the sport either before they played for the team, or after they left. It is clearly not yet complete and all inclusive, and additions and refinements will continue to be made over time.

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Monarcas Morelia official website