He was just 17 years old when he left Copenhagen for London, ready to fulfill a dream that many have.
One of the most promising players in Danish soccer this century, he made his debut at the age of just 18 in the front line for Arsenal, led by the eternal Arsène Wenger, but the years have not been kind to him.
Out of soccer since 2021, Nicklas Bendtner has now come clean in an interview with the British newspaper Daily Mail about everything that went wrong - from his accident in an Aston Martin to his addictions to bottles of wine and gambling.
The hot pink Nike
“I was one of the greatest young talents in the world,” the former forward confesses. One of his earliest distractions? Football boots.
The Dane remembers the contract he signed with Nike when he was still a teenager, with the Mercurial Vapour Roasas, in hot pink, in his sights. He wanted to be the first to wear them.
“I presented the idea to Nike and we signed a contract,” he recalls, noting that many stars soon copied him. “Ribery was one of them,” he says.
At 19, he went to Birmingham on loan from the Gunners. He was the second top scorer in the squad (13 goals in 48 games) and led the team back to the top flight.
Everything seemed to be going well and he was called back to the Emirates, but the following years would be marked by various ups and downs in his personal life, but especially on the pitch: a kind of cult was even created around him.
The beginning of the end
Although the numbers are misleading, the seasons that followed at Arsenal were not the best. Much of this was due, he says, to the fact that he never recovered from a car accident 15 years ago.
On his way to the Gunners' training ground in his gray Aston Martin DBS, Bendtner “spun out” on London's A1 and “was never the same again”.
“It was my best period at Arsenal, playing on the right with Andrey Arshavin on the left and Robin van Persie up front. I played every week and, after the accident, I was never the same. Suddenly I couldn't play five games at 100%,” he told the British newspaper.
“My body never completely healed”. He took pills to cope with the pain.
“I needed them to play because of the pain. I took them continuously for about two years. The problem was that I couldn't train without them. I read about the side effects and all that happened to me were the side effects of taking them for too long,” he says.
“It affected my mood, my personality. In the end, I had to stop taking them. In fact, I should never have started,” he recalls.
“Lord” of a cult
“If you asked me if I was one of the best strikers in the world, I'd say yes, because I believe in it,” said the striker, full of himself, in 2010.
But his drop in performance was increasingly noticeable on the pitch. In fact, it was so obvious that Arsenal fans picked up on this phrase from the Dane - which sounds more like it came from the mouth of a certain Zlatan - and gave him the status of “Lord” - a nickname that was forever attached to his surname.
There seemed to be no end to the memes about Lord Bendtner, which ironically hyperbolized his soccer skills.
It could even be said that the striker - who could have officially won the title after dating Danish royal Baroness Caroline luel-Brockdorff - became famous because of the countless jokes that appeared online.
The status was even officially cemented: “a fun trick” by the Dane, who bought a square meter of land in Scotland to effectively become a lord.
Benfica's interest
The “Viking Lord's” time in London came to an end in 2010/11 - he would return in 2012/14 from two loan spells - and at Sunderland he was, along with Larsson and Sessègnon, the top scorer with eight goals in 2011/12.
His performances in the Premier League attracted the interest of SL Benfica the following summer, who contacted the Gunners to find out his price.
The London club were asking for between 35 and 40 million euros for the Dane, who was 24 at the time: an unbearable sum for the Reds' coffers.
At the time of the Eagles' interest, the former forward now confesses, he had already “spent everything I had on wine, houses and art”.
Fines, bets and wine
“I blew all my money,” Bendtner recalls: “money disappears quickly when you spend 150,000 pounds on wine.”
“I've been collecting bottles of wine since I was 19. I have about 50,000 bottles at the moment. You buy a case to sell and another to drink,” he explains. But the money wasn't always squandered with pleasure.
“I had an expired parking ticket for £33,000,” he recalls: “I got it but I never opened it, I let it sit there until someone called me and said: ‘either you pay that, or they'll come to your house and take it all away’. So I had to pay.”
The game also cost him “a lot of money”.
“When you get that adrenaline rush from soccer, it's very difficult to find it elsewhere. You play to get that feeling and you only get it if there's a lot at stake. We could be at home, pick up a golf ball and put a glass 20 meters away, for more than a thousand euros every time we hit it,” he recalls.
What did the former young prospect lack? “Support”.
“I was completely alone with my money,” he confesses. “I had a lot of support at the club, but not so much off the pitch. I wish I'd had more support when I was going down the wrong path, but I ended up living the best life,” he believes.
His childhood dream was fulfilled - he just got out of the game too soon.
“In my communion, I wore an Arsenal shirt with Robert Pires' name on it. It was the shirt I wanted. I was living the dream,” he says.
