Kim Källström

Kim Källström [kɪm 'ɕɛlˌstrœm] (born August 24, 1982 in Sandviken, Sweden) is a left-footed Swedish midfielder playing for the Sweden national football team and Olympique Lyonnais. He has a powerful shot, which once knocked out his team-mate Andreas Isaksson during training prior to the 2006 FIFA World Cup. His nickname is Kongo-Kim. He is also known for sporting a rather unique quiff.

Källström's first professional club in Sweden was BK Häcken from Gothenburg but his big breakthrough in Sweden came when he moved to Djurgårdens IF Fotboll in 2002, where he won the Swedish Allsvenskan in 2002 in Swedish football and 2003 in Swedish football. Being from Gothenburg, it was expected that he would sign for IFK Göteborg. In the spring of 2004 Källström moved to the France club Stade Rennais FC, where he played together with fellow former Djurgården player Andreas Isaksson.

Källström made his international debut in 2001 against Finland national football team. He played for his country at 2004 European Football Championship and has been capped 45 times scoring 6 goals, as of April 2007.

Källström had an impressive showing in the 2006 FIFA World Cup for Sweden. Although he began the tournament on the bench as a substitue, he replaced Anders Svensson for a starting spot against Paraguay, England, and Germany. He had several superb shots as well as an overall impressive showing, both offensively and defensively helping Sweden to reach the second round. On May 26 2006, he signed with French league champions Olympique Lyonnais. Recently Olympique Lyonnais have opened talks with Kallstrom about a possible contract extension.

Euro 2008 qualifying

He scored off of a right-footed blast, just outside of the box in Sweden's 1-0 victory over Latvia on September 2, 2006. This was Sweden's first game of their 2008 European Championship qualifying campaign. On October 11, 2006, Källstrom dazzled the crowd and stunned his Icelandic adversaries with an 8th minute 45 yard rocket that found the back of the net through a sea of bodies. The goal proved to be decisive, as Sweden soundly defeated Iceland national football team 2-1, thus extending their qualification recorded to an immaculate 4-0 and placing them at the head of their group with an achieved maximum of 12 points. On May 8th, 2007, Källstrom underwent a severe injury in a club game that will subsequently sideline him from both upcoming Sweden qualifying games - Iceland (June 2, 2007) and Denmark (June 6, 2007). On August 21, 2007 Källstrom netted a strike to beat United States men's national soccer team 1-0.

Trivia

Källström is a player who has entered into Championship Manager folklore as one of the best buys in the game whilst still playing for Djurgårdens IF and Häcken. He became a very popular transfer target for players of Championship Manager 01/02 in particular. At this stage in his career he was still a little-known player at Häcken. This was because the stats and abilities he was given by the developers did not reflect the player's very low valuation. This meant even the poorest clubs could afford a quality player. He became almost a "cheat" player, and this led to the developers giving him a much more realistic valuation in later editions of the game.