Leicester City In 100 Players: Pontus Kåmark
Sweden international full-back Kåmark made 77 appearances for Leicester City between September 1995 and July 1999. It would have been far more had he not suffered a serious injury.
Pontus was a calm and assured player who was an excellent reader of the game. He had good distribution and was an accomplished technical player who was well respected by players and fans alike. He arrived at Leicester with a very impressive record.
Born in Västerås he was selected for the national youth teams for both ice hockey and football. He chose football and went on to represent Sweden at all levels winning 13 under-21 caps and 57 full Sweden caps.
In 1989 he left Västerås SK to join IFK Göteborg where he became captain, winning five Allsvenskan titles in six years as well as the 1991 Svenska Cup. In the season before joining Leicester, he also captained IFK Göteborg to the UEFA Champions League Quarter-Finals.
He made his full international debut in February 1990 and was a World Cup semi-finalist in 1994 when Sweden lost 1-0 to Brazil, who went on to win the World Cup.
By the time he signed for Mark McGhee’s Leicester City, who were top of the Championship, for a reported fee £840,000, he had won the first 28 of his 57 Sweden caps.
However, on his home debut, in his second game for Leicester City, he damaged his ACL and was out injured for over a year, by which time the Foxes, now managed by Martin O’Neill, were back in the Premier League.
A month after his return to the side, he then broke his arm but he had recovered in time to famously man-mark Middlesbrough’s Brazilian star Juninho in the 1997 League Cup Final at Wembley and in the replay at Hillsborough when Leicester City lifted the trophy.
The following season (1997/98) Pontus was a virtual ever-present in the side with O’Neill pitting him against the best players in the Premier League such as David Beckham, Dwight Yorke, Dennis Bergkamp, Marc Overmars and Eric Cantona.
Pontus was also respected for his intellectual ability. He had an engineering degree and had studied languages, including Arabic. He also studied marketing at DeMontfort University.
The defender returned to Sweden in July 1999 for family reasons and had spells at AIK and then at Göteborg again. He retired in 2002 after knee problems forced his withdrawal from Sweden’s 2002 World Cup squad.
He has since become an established and respected football media figure in Sweden.