Marco Streller - Club Career

Club Career

Streller began his youth football with local club FC Aesch, he came through the ranks between 1988 and 1997. He then played for FC Arlesheim in the 2. Liga, before he started his professional football career with local club FC Basel with manager Christian Gross in 2000. He played just one game in his debut season and was therefore was loaned to feeder club FC Concordia Basel for the following season. He scored 16 goals in 30 starts in the Nationalliga B with Concordia that season, which made his home club and Gross sit up and take notice. They called him back in 2002, but after playing just three games was loaned out again in January of the following year to FC Thun. He scored eight goals in just 16 games for Thun and was subsequently recalled to Basel, being promised first team football.

During the 2003–04 Swiss Super League season, he scored 13 goals in 16 games, thus gathering the interest of a handful of Bundesliga clubs including VfB Stuttgart. Stuttgart eventually signed him ahead of the 2004–05 season. During his debut on 14 March 2004 he also scored his first goal for the VFB. But after returning from an injury he scored just four goals in 28 matches in his two years in Stuttgart. Therefore and to gain match practice, he was loaned out to 1. FC Köln for their second half of the 2006 season. After returning from Köln, where he made 14 starts, Streller scored five goals in 27 games as Stuttgart won the Championship, but he still failed to impress the board.

Stuttgart therefore allowed Streller to rejoin his boyhood heroes FC Basel on a free transfer in June 2007. This was his fourth spell at the club and it turned out to be very successful. He was Basel's top goal-scorer during the 2007–08 season with twelve league goals and 16 goals in all competitions. In the last game of the season Valentin Stocker and Marco Streller scored the two goals in Basels 2–0 home win over BSC Young Boys and Basel won the championship.

Streller missed the start of the 2008–09 season season after returning from UEFA Euro 2008 injured. He playing his first game of the season in a 1–0 Swiss Cup win over FC Schötz on 20 September 2008. During the 2008–09 Swiss Super League season Streller played 23 league games, scoring six goals, but Basel finished just third in the League table, qualifying for the Europa League. In the 2009–10 season Streller played 29 League games, scoring 21 goals, and Basel won the Double. In the 2010–11 season Basel were able to defend the League Title, thus Streller won his fourth Swiss League Medal.

For the 2011–12 Swiss Super League season trainer Thorsten Fink named Marco Streller as team captain. He scored his first UEFA Champions League goal for Basel on the 22 November in the Group C tie in the Arena Națională, in Bucharest, as Basel won the away game against Oțelul Galați 3–2. At the end of the 2011–12 season Streller won the Double, the League Championship title and the Swiss Cup with Basel.

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