Club The birthplace of Rodolfo Kappenberger was
Lugano, which is why he played his youth football at the former stadium Campo Marzio with
FC Lugano. He later moved to
Zug to learn the German language and while here Kappenberger joined
SC Zug, who at that time played in the second tier of Swiss football. He then returned home and again played for Lugano for another two seasons between 1939 and 1941. In 1941, aged 24, Kappenberger moved to Basel to study dentistry, which meant that
FC Basel, who were then only playing in the second highest league, acquired a talented and elegant winger without a transfer fee and for a modest salary. He joined Basel's first team for their
1941–42 season under player-coach
Eugen Rupf. Kappenberger played his
domestic league debut for the club in the home game in the
Landhof on 31 August 1941. Rupf scored the first goal,
Alex Mathys scored seven goals,
Joseph Bossi added one and Kappenberger himself also netted one as Basel played a dominating 10–1 win against
SC Juventus Zürich. The team played a very dominating season, they ended the eastern group of the 1st League group as winners and in the
Swiss Cup they advanced to the final and were only beaten after they lost the replay. Kappenberger was the team’s best goal scorer with 14 goals in the league and two in the cup. In the league play-off match against the western group winners
FC Bern 1894 Kappenberger scored the first goal as they won 3–1 to achieve promotion. Basel suffered relegation at the end of their
1944–45 season, but they became Nationalliga B champions the following year, thus winning promotion to return to the top tier of Swiss football. Kappenberger remained loyal to FCB until the summer of 1948. He reached the cup final three times during his seven years with RotBlau. The team were defeated twice, 1942 against
Grasshopper Club and 1944 against
Lausanne-Sport. But the cup final from 1947 was won 3–0 against Lausanne. Between the years 1941 and 1948 Kappenberger played a total of 127 games for Basel scoring a total of 42 goals. 100 of these games were in the
Swiss Super League, 19 in the
Swiss Cup and eight were friendly games. He scored 31 goals in the domestic league, six in the cupand the other five were scored during the test games.
International Kappenberger also played six games for the
Switzerland national team in which he scored five goals. He gave his debut on 28 December 1941 in the
Mestalla Stadium in
Valencia, as
Spain beat the Swiss by 3–2. Kappenberger scored his team’s first goal, which was the intermediate equaliser to one goal each. He also scored two goals in the 2–1 away win on 1 February 1942 against Germany in the
Praterstadion in
Vienna. ==Private life==