Atlético Morelia

Monarcas Morelia
	File:Morelia.PNG
Full name	Club Atlético Monarcas Morelia
Nickname(s)	Monarcas (Monarchs); La Monarquia (The Monarchy); Los ates ; Los Canarios
Founded	November 21st, 1924
Ground	Estadio Morelos; Morelia, Michoacán, Mexico
Capacity	41,500
Chairman	Álvaro Dávila
Manager	Luis Fernando Tena
League	Primera División de México
Apertura 2007	Quarterfinals; 10th (league)
Home colours	Away colours

Monarcas Morelia or simply Monarcas, is a Mexican professional football club. Monarcas Morelia plays in the Primera División de México. 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.

Honours

2nd Division Championship: 1
- 1981
League Championships: 1
- Invierno 2000
CONCACAF Champions' Cup Runner Up: 2
- 2002, 2003

History

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

In 1951, Club Atlético Monarcas are officially promoted into the Primera División de México after having a successful run through the Primera División A & 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 Primera División A. 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.

Stadium

On the late years of the 80s it was decided that the old stadium Venustiano Carranza where the morelia hosted their home games was lacking capacity and that a new stadium with 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 inaugurated, the inaugural game was between Atletico Morelia and Club America, which is at present time the archi-rival of the Monarcas. The Stadium has an official capacity for 45 thousand spectators, although on inauguration day in 1989 it is estimated that more than 50 thousand people attended the event. ^{[citation needed]}

In the year of 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".

First title

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 coronated on 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 Morelias 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 which they lost.

Copa Libertadores

In the 2002 edition of Copa Libertadores, under the command of coach Rubén Omar Romano, they reached the quarter finals phase. Their performance in that tournament made them deserving of the title "World's Club Team of the Month" granted in April 2002 by the IFFHS. ^[1]

Chicago Fire

The Monarcas have a sister team relationship with the Chicago Fire MLS team. A cooperative agreement that both partnership incorporates playing, coaching, and executive personnel, as well as sharing of business and development practices

Apertura 2006

In the Apertura of 2006 with Coach Hugo Hernandez in charge but was later replaced by Marco Antonio Figueroa in the 10th game. The team occupied the 12th place in the general table for which made them unable to participate in the Liguilla.

Clausura 2007

In the Clausura 2007 after a bad Interliga 2007 Monarcas with coach Marco Antonio Figueroa stayed in 10th place with 22 pts and were eliminated in the repechaje by Atlas 1-0.

Apertura 2007

In the Apertura 2007, after participating in the 2007 SuperLiga Monarcas was led by Jose Luis Trejo until the 13th game of the season, he was fired after the team had not won for 5 consecutive games. In the 14th game, David Patiño Oviedo was named head coach of the team, Monarcas Morelia eliminated Club America from the repechaje after a 3-1 on aggregate, in the liguilla they would then be eliminated by Santos Laguna after a 5-2 on aggregate.

Current squad

Note: Flags indicate national team as defined under FIFA eligibility rules. Players may hold more than one non-FIFA nationality.


No.	Pos.	Nation	Player
1	GK	MEX	Miguel Ángel Fraga
2	DF	MEX	Mario García
4	DF	MEX	Jaime Durán
5	MF	BRA	Wilson Tiago Mathías
7	MF	BRA	Joaozinho
8	MF	MEX	Ignacio Carrasco
9	FW	MEX	Luis Ángel Landín
10	MF	COL	Aldo Ramírez
11	MF	URU	Gonzalo Choy González
13	MF	MEX	José Alberto Hernández
14	FW	MEX	Ever Guzmán
15	MF	MEX	Jaime Ruiz
16	DF	MEX	Adrian Aldrete


No.	Pos.	Nation	Player
18	FW	MEX	Luis Orozco
20	MF	USA	Sonny Guadarrama
21	MF	MEX	Ricardo Mauricio Martínez
22	DF	MEX	Guillermo Chávez
23	GK	MEX	Moisés Muñoz
24	DF	MEX	Alberto Lucio
25	DF	MEX	Horacio Cervantes
26	DF	ARG	Mauricio Martín Romero
27	DF	MEX	Omar Trujillo (C)
35	DF	MEX	Jesús Castillo
40	FW	BRA	Eder Pacheco
53	DF	MEX	Arturo González
77	FW	MEX	Elias Hernández