When Brentford were trying to sign Pontus Jansson in the summer of 2019, Thomas Frank was in Denmark visiting his eldest daughter’s boarding school.
Leeds United finished third in the Championship during the 2018-19 season and lost to Derby County in the play-off semi-finals. Jansson started 37 games for Leeds but his relationship with Marcelo Bielsa, the head coach at the time, had become strained.
Brentford, who finished 10 points outside the play-off places, were preparing for Frank’s first full season in charge. The recruitment department usually prioritised signing young players but everybody was prepared to break the rules for a 28-year-old Sweden international. So when the opportunity came for Frank to call Jansson, he snuck off into a quiet corner of his daughter’s school.
Five and a half years after that conversation, which landed Frank in trouble with his family because it went on for longer than expected, Jansson is speaking to The Athletic at the relaunch of Brentford’s Hall of Fame, where he is the first member of their 2020-21 promotion-winning squad to be inducted. Frank cannot attend but has recorded a video, and at the end of the evening, Jansson presents matchday announcer Peter Gilham with a special lifetime award.
The centre-back returned to his boyhood club, Malmo, in 2023 and has lifted back-to-back Swedish titles. It is unusual for an active player to be honoured but he led Brentford to the Premier League after beating Swansea City in the 2021 Championship play-off final — and helped them stay in the division for two years — so is among the most important figures in the club’s recent history. However, things could have worked out differently.
“I wanted to stay (at Leeds) and convince Marcelo (Bielsa) to keep me,” says Jansson, 33. “But they said, ‘You will have to train with the under-23s’ and that would have been tough to change his mind. Leeds had to sell someone to bring other players in. The problem was I didn’t want to go to the places they wanted to sell me, so I was a bit of a headache for them.”
The Athletic’s Jay Harris with Jansson (Jay Harris)
Jansson instructed his agent to call Rasmus Ankersen, Brentford’s co-director of football at the time. Ankersen was interested in a deal but had to check how he performed across their internal data metrics. Jansson passed the test, so they agreed to pay Leeds around £6million ($7.5m at current exchange rates), though Jansson’s arrival in Austria, where Brentford were based for a pre-season training camp, sparked confusion in the dressing room.
“(Then-Brentford forward) Ollie Watkins came up to me and said, ‘Why are you here? Why are you coming to Brentford?’,”Jansson says. “It was probably because I had a good season with Leeds. We should have got promoted and there was a lot of criticism around that. But I felt a lot of love from the (Brentford) players.”
Brentford’s squad contained established stars Watkins and Said Benrahma, along with new signings David Raya, Bryan Mbeumo, Mathias Jensen, Ethan Pinnock and Christian Norgaard. Henrik Dalsgaard and Luke Daniels were the only players 30 or over. Jansson, who had represented Sweden at the 2018 World Cup, was brought in to provide experience, yet it was a surprise when Frank gave him the captain’s armband.
“We had a friendly against Norwich City and I was the captain because Romaine (Sawyers) was not playing and no one said anything,” Jansson says. “We were talking about it before the first game of the season and I said to Thomas, ‘Out of respect for Henrik, I want to ask him if he is OK with it’, because he was the vice-captain before Romaine left (to join West Bromwich Albion). Henrik said, ‘You are the one, you have to be the captain’. It felt strange but it became natural for everyone.”
Jansson did not even know Brentford had a Danish coach when they first registered interest but he quickly built a close relationship with Frank, who helped him overcome superstitious rituals he followed before matches.
“What a fantastic person he is,” Jansson says. “He comes into rooms and gives people energy. As a football coach, how he has developed and found new solutions, how open-minded and brave he is to do these things — he is one of the best in the Premier League. To do this with a small budget and squad is crazy. Not only to do it one year but he and Brentford are clever enough to change things. It keeps everyone on their toes.
“I came here as a guy who wanted to show off and shine. I became a leader and people remember me as a good captain and a good person. The way he changed me, I will never forget. He is a friend for life, the best coach I ever worked with.”
A lot happened during Jansson’s first 12 months at Brentford. They waved goodbye to their beloved but crumbling ground, Griffin Park, grappled with the Covid-19 pandemic, missed out on automatic promotion and lost the play-off final to west London rivals Fulham in extra time.
Jansson describes the defeat at Wembley as one of the “darkest days” of his career. On stage, he jokes about being “pissed off” about the prospect of “playing 46 more games in this s*** league” when Brentford’s owner, Matthew Benham, and director of football, Phil Giles, tried to encourage players in the dressing room afterwards.
Less than a year later, they were back at Wembley celebrating reaching the Premier League having beaten Swansea. The night before, the coaching staff held an impromptu meeting at the hotel. They had created an inspirational video for the players featuring messages from their friends and family. Jansson cried when his wife and daughter appeared on screen.
“We were an inexperienced, young team that hadn’t been on that stage before when we lost to Fulham,” Jansson says. “We were too passive. We were going for it more against Swansea and scored two early goals. I remember Christian (Norgaard) getting injured in the warm-up and he was replaced by Mads (Roerslev). He was so nervous but he had a fantastic game and it showed he was good enough for that level.”
Jansson made 49 top-flight appearances for Brentford. He started in their famous victories over Arsenal and Manchester United, but one of his favourite memories is his stoppage-time header in a 2-1 win against Watford at Vicarage Road in April 2022.
Jansson celebrates his goal against Watford in 2022 (Matthew Lewis/Getty Images)
“That was the moment where we had basically secured another year in the division,” Jansson says. “No one except us believed that (was possible) before the season started. It felt like everyone thought, ‘They are going to go straight down — it’s Brentford’.”
A persistent hamstring injury interrupted Jansson’s final season at Brentford. He only started eight games and limped off after 15 minutes on what turned out to be his last appearance in a defeat to Newcastle United in April 2023. He announced he would be rejoining Malmo, who he grew up supporting, a few days later.
He watched from the stands on the final day of the 2022-23 campaign as Brentford narrowly missed out on qualifying for the Europa Conference League but beat the champions Manchester City 1-0 to secure a ninth-place finish. After the game, he was given a guard of honour by his team-mates and walked onto the pitch with his oldest daughter. He paused multiple times throughout a speech to the fans because he was so overcome with emotion.
During his speech, he said: “When I was thrown out of a previous club, this club welcomed me with open arms. When I struggled to find myself, this club made me captain. When people always told me how I should be, this club let me be myself. When I was at my lowest in life, this club picked me up and for that, I will never forget you.” It is for this special bond that he has been inducted into the Hall of Fame.
“I invest everything in the club I play for,” Jansson says. “What I said after that game was not empty words. Everyone who has been close to me, the players and staff, have seen that and felt the same.”
Jansson remains in regular contact with his former team-mates and visited the training ground in November. He still speaks to Benham, too.
“We are interested in the same things,” Jansson says of his relationship with Benham. “I would love to learn even more from him, like the way he sees things and the way he built this club. I would like to take that with me to other places in the world or maybe I’m going to work with him in the future.
“He doesn’t want to be the main man but everyone knows that together with Peter (Gilham), he is Mr Brentford. He is the one who made all of this possible. I’m full of praise for him, Phil (Giles) and other people close to Matthew for what they have done for this club.”
Benham, Frank and Giles will all be equally grateful to Jansson for his contributions to Brentford’s remarkable story over the last decade.
GO DEEPER
Farewell Pontus Jansson, a Brentford legend
(Top photo: Tony Marshall/Getty Images)
