{"id":578626,"date":"2020-06-25T16:28:01","date_gmt":"2020-06-25T13:28:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.paokfc.gr\/uncategorized-en\/20200625-xronia-polla-pontus\/"},"modified":"2020-06-26T11:47:18","modified_gmt":"2020-06-26T08:47:18","slug":"20200625-xronia-polla-pontus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.paokfc.gr\/en\/news\/20200625-xronia-polla-pontus\/","title":{"rendered":"Happy Birthday Pontus!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Pontus Wernbloom<\/strong> was born on June 25 1986 in <b>Kungalv <\/b>in <strong>Sweden<\/strong>. He got involved with football from 2001 when he joined the youth academy at his local club, <strong>IK Kongah\u00e4lla. <\/strong>In 2004 he moved to the youth academy at <strong>IFK Goteborg.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>A year later he was elevated into the senior squad and began to get some playing time. Initially he played in midfield, which is his natural position, but from 2007 following the departure of <strong>Marcus Berg <\/strong>he was used as a center forward because of his knack for scoring goals. He remained at the club until 2009 with a record of 70 appearances and 23 goals, while winning 1 <strong>Swedish league title <\/strong>(2007), one <strong>Swedish Cup<\/strong> (2008) and one <strong>Super<\/strong> <strong>Cup<\/strong> (2008). He also made his European debut with a goal against <strong>Murcia<\/strong> in the first qualifying round of the <strong>UEFA Champions League<\/strong> in the summer of 2008.<\/p>\n<p>He moved on to join Dutch outfit <strong>AZ Alkmaar<\/strong>. He immediately won a place in the starting lineup under Ronald Koeman and played four times in the <strong>Champions<\/strong> <strong>League<\/strong> group stage during his first season. In the following season, he scored two of his teams four goals in the <strong>Play Offs<\/strong> for the <strong>UEFA Europa<\/strong> <strong>League<\/strong> which took his team into the group stage of European football&#8217;s second-tier competition. He stayed with AZ until January 2012, finishing with a record of 97 appearances, 17 goals and 13 assists in all competitions for the club.<\/p>\n<p>His next stop was <strong>CSKA Moscow<\/strong>. His debut for the club was the stuff of dreams. As a member of the starting XI in a home match against <strong>Real Madrid<\/strong> he scored a wonderful goal in a 1-1 draw. It was only the start of an exceptional season.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Wernbloom <\/strong>became a central cog in the CSKA machine and won three <b>Russian league title <\/b>(2013,2014 \u03ba\u03b1\u03b9 2016), one <strong>Russian Cup<\/strong> (2013) and two <strong>Super<\/strong> <strong>Cups<\/strong> (2014, 2015). He made 224 appearances, scored 22 goals, and 18 assists, as well as 34 <strong>Champions League<\/strong> appearances and three goals, while establishing himself as one of the best midfielders in the Russian championship.<\/p>\n<p>In parallel, from 2008 &#8211; when he made his debut &#8211; until 2016, he was also a regular member of the Sweden squad, making 51 appearances and scoring two goals while contributing four assists. He also played 24 times for the Swedish Under-21 side and scored six goals.<\/p>\n<p>At the end of the 2017-18 season <strong>Wernbloom <\/strong>departed CSKA for family reasons. PAOK showed an interest from day one and managed to secure his signature amid tough competition.<\/p>\n<p>During his first season with the <strong>Dikefalos tou Vorra,<\/strong> the <strong>Swede<\/strong> experienced rotten luck, damaging his Achilles tendon and has not made an appearance since.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Our midfielder Pontus Wernbloom turns 34 today, and PAOK FC would like to wish him many years of health, happiness and successes on both a personal and professional level.","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":578609,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1520,5],"tags":[2378,2457,2534,3766,11398],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v18.5.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Happy Birthday Pontus! - PAOKFC<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.paokfc.gr\/en\/news\/20200625-xronia-polla-pontus\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Happy Birthday Pontus! 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