CUTTING HIS TEETH
THE EARLY DAYS
YET Hamberg’s enthusiasm for the game was evident at an early age, and when he reached his teens, he displayed knowledge that arguably went beyond his years.
One of his good friends growing up, Andreas Olsen, recalls: “Me and Bjorn became friends when we were in our teens, but I have memories of him from when we were kids playing against each other.
“He was giving instructions to his teammates on the pitch that probably was on a higher level than we got from our dads coaching our teams. As a player he was a gifted midfielder with good feet and an even better eye for the game.
“As many other talented players from our region, he didn’t reach a higher level in Sweden. No players from our region did.”
Indeed, before the success of Ostersunds, the area was a footballing backwater.
Some will rightfully point to the job done by Potter in taking Ostersunds to the dizzying heights of the Europa League as the main catalyst for changing all that, but Hamberg did his bit too - long before the pair had even met.
In 2007, in a bid to try and build a more progressive footballing philosophy for local players, Hamberg and Olsen came together to form BK Bjorner, where he took on the role of player coach.
“The football that was played here was as far from tiki-taka as you could get. There wasn’t any team playing in a higher level,” Olsen adds.
“That’s why he [Hamberg], at just age 20, got the idea of BK Bjornen, where we gathered all of our friends who wanted to play a more positive football and started off in the lowest regional league in Sweden.” WHILE there was plenty of enthusiasm at the new club, it was initially a million miles away from the professional atmosphere Hamberg would later come to enjoy.
Olsen explains: “When we played, a nutmeg was cheered more than a goal. The first season, we didn’t really care about results. All that mattered was having fun playing and showing everyone else that football didn’t have to be just trying to hit the ball to the tall kid playing forward and hope for the best.
“After just having fun and losing quite a lot of games due to fatigue during the first season, we decided to start training a bit more seriously before our second season.
“It paid off and we became “the invincibles” of Division Five Jamtland. In Division Four (actually the sixth league in Sweden) we performed well for a couple of seasons, but with players in their early 20’s going off to study or work in other parts of