Leeds United defender Pontus Jansson has opened up on his injury hell over the last two years.
Pontus Jansson
Leeds United defender Pontus Jansson has told Fotbollskanalen that the last two years have been hard due to a knee injury.
Jansson, 25, has been one of the stars of the Championship season, having turned in a host of outstanding displays for Leeds since joining on a season-long loan deal from Torino back in August.
Pontus Jansson
The Swedish international’s move will turn permanent if he plays 20 games, and that almost seems like a formality considering how he has performed alongside Kyle Bartley so far.
The only possible obstacle would be an injury, and the centre back has actually opened up on his injury hell in an interview with Fotbollskanalen.
Having been away on international duty with Sweden, Jansson revealed that the last two years have been ‘crazy hard’ on him due to a long-standing knee injury.
Rajiv van La Parra of Huddersfield Town in action with Pontus Jansson of Leeds United
Jansson claims that, when he left Malmo for Torino in 2014, he had a crippling knee injury that left him in pain every single morning at the age of just 23 – and was still in pain last month.
The defender when for training in Rome to help overcome his knee problems during his time at Torino, and learned that his hip was also causing him problems – but now feels that he is over those injury problems.
“Yes, the last two years have been crazy hard,” said Jansson. “It is not really until about a month ago that I got rid of it completely. Every morning I woke up, I had pain and felt “damn, should it really be like this?”
Blackburn’s Danny Graham in action with Leeds’ Pontus Jansson
“It was actually the sporting director at Torino who sent me to a guy in Rome. I lived there for three weeks and trained twice a day, and after that, I overcame it and felt that it was good. Then I understood that it was not only the actual zone around the knee that was the problem but the whole function of the hip, back and front; that it was not fully functional.”
Leeds will hope that Jansson doesn’t suffer any recurrence of those knee problems, given that he has been an absolute rock in the heart of Garry Monk’s defence this season.
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