Now retired, Pontus Wernbloom can look back on a successful career, where he started at IFK Göteborg, before heading to Holland with AZ Alkmaar, Russia at CSKA Moscow, Greece at PAOK Salonika, before returning to his home country for a year and then retiring.
What is missing there, quite obviously, is a stint in the Premier League, which could have happened thanks to Crystal Palace.
Wernbloom revealed as much in an interview with Grunden Bois magazine, where he was asked if he had anything ‘kiosk tipping’ (the less literal translation would be a ‘scoop’) to tell them, which is when he revealed the information about the Eagles.
He said: “Wow. Can I? Before I went to Greece, I was on the phone with Roy Hodgson at Crystal Palace. Probably nobody knows.”
There’s no indication why the move never took place, but it’s clear that the Premier League side were interested in signing the Swede, perhaps in the summer of 2018.
Instead, he ended up going to PAOK, where he only made 16 appearances in two seasons, as an Achilles tendon rupture stopped him in his tracks 14 games into the 2018-19 season.
Maybe it was for the best, at least for Crystal Palace, that the move never happened.
