At the end of a turbulent career marked by controversy, Danish striker Nicklas Bendtner tells his side of the story. Shubhankar Arun talks to the player and his ghost writer, Rune Skyum-Nielsen.
Tumultuous is perhaps the word that best describes the career of Nicklas Bendtner, a journey where each step forward was countered by two in the opposite direction.
“Something you can say about Nicklas that you can’t say about anybody else in football is that, over these last twenty years he has had the most eventful and crazy life”, says Rune Skyum-Nielsen, ghost writer of Bendtner’s recently released autobiography Both Sides. “He’s experienced so much on so many different levels, it’s unbelievable.”
When Nielsen first interviewed Bendtner in 2016 for a magazine article, he realised something important was missing from the narrative – context. “The story was much bigger. It was a story about British football culture I think – a few dickheads and a young man getting into trouble because of all the money and praise he got after having nothing before that”, Nielsen says.
It is a career that went awry from the very start and, unfortunately for Bendtner, he had no one who could lead him back to the right path.
Bendtner got his first real taste of senior football at Birmingham City, where he spent a season on loan at the age of eighteen under manager Steve Bruce. “I came from living a very different life in a small room at a host family with almost no pocket money at all,” remembers Bendtner, “and suddenly I lived in a penthouse, had loads to spend, went out with my much older teammates all the time, and sometimes some of the guys even crashed my place with their dates.”
There is an anecdote in his autobiography which serves as a microcosm of his time in Birmingham. Early in the season, he was called up to the manager’s office. Bruce, who was red with rage, slammed the door shut and bellowed: “I’ve heard you were out on the town on Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday! What the hell are you playing at?!” Bendtner took a deep breath before replying: “I’m afraid that’s not quite right coach. I was also out on Wednesday.”
Bruce could not believe what he had just heard. He began to sputter, put his head on his desk and roared with laughter. Bendtner got off with a warning and Bruce’s trust in him remained intact. Reflecting on his time at Birmingham, Bendtner says that while he got plenty of valuable experience on the pitch, he was on a completely different path off the field compared to the culture at Arsenal. “Some guidance from somebody I knew and respected could probably have made a difference”, he says. “Especially in my case because I was so curious-minded and also very easily tempted. I think it’s fair to say that Birmingham was full of temptations in 2006.”
Nielsen views the situation differently. He says Arsenal should not have sent Bendtner to Birmingham in the first place. Birmingham City had been relegated from the Premier League the previous year, their players were much older than Bendtner, and they had a reputation for partying hard. Nielsen believes the catastrophe should have been “easy to foresee” for Arsenal: “Guys at eighteen are very different from each other and Nicklas was not a mature guy and the Arsenal academy knew that. They couldn't not have known that. It's impossible.”
While Bruce certainly did believe in him, he was perhaps over-indulgent. “It should never have been tolerated for him to go out thrice a week and be made to stay in that place”, says Nielsen. “That change was too big and that gap was too big from where he came from.” Bruce’s “arm around the shoulder” approach was in stark contrast to the one Bendtner found on his return to Arsenal. Arséne Wenger is a famed disciplinarian who has always kept a certain distance from his players' personal lives. “We had a good relationship most of the time. I still admire him as a manager. I know he saw potential in me as much more than a target man, and I think that we were on the right path for a while,” says Bendtner.
The fissures first appeared towards the tail end of the 2009-10 season. Earlier in the season, Bendtner had been involved in a horrific car accident in which his Aston Martin rolled down a bank before smashing into a tree. He was lucky to have survived but did not come away unscathed. He picked up a groin injury from which he says he "never recovered a hundred percent.” The injury worsened towards the end of the season and Wenger urged him to forgo the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa, but Bendtner paid no heed to his advice. Bendtner says this was a decision that “might have changed something between us.”
As Wenger had predicted, the groin worsened at the World Cup and Bendtner found himself slipping down the pecking order on his return to Arsenal. Nielsen says he did not tackle the frustration of being on the bench well and began “seeking approval in nightclubs instead.” The recurring injuries, excessive partying, and gambling became the dominant themes of the latter years of his time in North London. In his autobiography Bendtner details the pain he felt at the way things worked out at Arsenal, and the feeling of having let down a man who saw so much potential in him.
Talking to Bendtner, you also get the sense that there is a level of regret at what could have been if Wenger had been more invested in him. “Wenger was not and should not be my babysitter. He had too many others to look after and of course I wasn't his biggest priority”, he says. “It was easier for my national team coach, Morten Olsen, to put me first when it was needed and show a personal interest in what was going on in my life, and I guess that also paid off, if you look at my scoring record for Denmark.”
Bendtner’s tally of thirty goals for his country, including one at the 2010 World Cup and two at Euro 2012, puts him among the top ten goalscorers in Denmark's history. Nielsen attributes this duality between his club and international careers to the attention he was given by his respective managers: “Maybe he needed trust, and maybe more trust than many others. There was no time for that at Arsenal, but he’s aware that he should have been coping differently with having to start on the bench and should have trained harder.”
After successive loan spells at Sunderland and Juventus, Bendtner pressed for a permanent move away from Arsenal in the summer of 2013. A deal had been agreed with Crystal Palace, but Wenger pulled the plug with just a few hours left in the transfer window, citing a lack of reinforcements in the striking department. Yet in the press and on social media, Bendtner was portrayed as the one who had chosen to stay at the club, so that he could run down his contract and collect the money. This was not an aberration – it fit the trend.
The Dane's flamboyance made him an easy target for journalists, and the English media is notorious for targeting young footballers, publishing rumours and half-baked stories that fit their pre-assigned narratives and presumptions. Just take a look at what is happening today with Mason Greenwood, a player who, at the age of nineteen, has already been labelled a troublemaker. “A lot of Premier League players do stuff that's not by the book but they're not caught on the radar. But if you're caught on the radar once, you'll keep appearing on the radar because they'll look for you”, says Nielsen.
This is why it became a priority for Bendtner and Nielsen to reclaim the narrative. Nielsen explains how the long sessions they had while writing the book were used as a form of therapy to help the striker understand himself better: “I think if you look at the book, a lot of stuff makes more sense when you get the whole picture. He has obviously matured, but he might be a late bloomer, you could say.”
Behind all the controversy and headlines, there existed a supremely talented footballer whom the media, fans, and coaches never took the time to understand. Now he is finally telling his side of the tale, and it is high time we listen to him.