Former Arsenal Star Folds After 15 Year Career

Former Arsenal star Nicklas Bendtner recently called time on his 15-year career, at the tender age of just 33.

Bendtner scored 30 times in 81 games for his country and won a Serie A title with Juventus, but he is unlikely to be recalled as an Arsenal legend now he has finally hung up his boots. Dogged by controversy, he was immensely self-confident but never quite lived up to the hype.

Signed from Copenhagen as a youngster, his first serious senior football came during a loan spell in the Championship with Birmingham. He scored 11 times in 38 outings, helping the Blues into the Premier League and earning himself a call-up to Denmark for European Championship qualifiers. He returned to Arsenal full of self-belief, once saying: “I want to be top scorer in the Premier League, top scorer at the World Cup and, within five years, I want to be among the best strikers in the world. Trust me; it will happen. I look around at other players, I see my own ability, and I can’t see anything that tells me it won’t happen.”

In 2007/08, he netted his first goal in Arsenal colors, scoring in a 2-0 League Cup win against Newcastle. A month later came his first Champions League goal, Arsenal’s final strike in a 7-0 rout of Slavia Prague. It seemed the confident young Dane was staying true to his word. When he later grabbed a derby day winner against Spurs before Christmas 2007, it seemed the world was at his feet.

By 2009/10, he hadn’t forced his way into the Arsenal team regularly, instead making as many appearances from the bench as from the start. There were highlights, a hattrick at the Emirates against Porto in the Champions League being one such occasion. On a personal level, he doubtless enjoyed netting in the Nou Camp against Barcelona, even if his side lost 4-1. He also scored at the 2010 World Cup, giving the Danes their only win against Cameroon, 2-1.

In 2011/12, he joined Sunderland on loan, but just eight goals from a relatively poor 25 starts weren’t enough to earn him an Arsenal spot. He joined Juventus on loan, winning Serie A but only turning in 11 appearances. Eventually, he left Arsenal for free, having never produced regularly. He found himself playing for Vfl Wolfsburg, where he won a German Cup, but he never made good on his promise of world domination. Much of that could be attributed to a rather interesting lifestyle off the field.

In 2020, he admitted that he had lost huge sums of money playing poker, clearly just as inconsistent around the felt as he was in the 18-yard box. “I lost a lot of money, an unrealistic amount,” Bendtner said. “It’s hard to say how much it was in reality, but I’d estimate that it was almost 50 million Korona (£5.4m).” Bendtner enjoyed playing Texas Hold ’em, the world’s most popular poker variant, but with little success, it seems. However, he was always in control, adding: “It was something that I was always in control of, and I simply betted big sums of money.”

He might have been in control of the cards, but that wasn’t always the case in his personal life, as he found himself in hot water with the law on more than one occasion during his chequered career. In 2012, whilst on loan at Sunderland, he was charged with criminal damage after an alleged car-wrecking spree. That may well have been the final straw for Arsene Wenger at the Emirates, and an indiscretion in 2018 might have been the catalyst for his early retirement. Whilst playing for Norwegian side Rosenborg, he received a 50-day custodial sentence for assaulting a taxi driver. As recently as April this year, it was reported he might lose his $200k Porsche after a string of driving offences.

Nicklas Bendtner could still play at a good level, but at 33, he is a player few would touch and who perhaps looks back on his career as a lost opportunity. He wasn’t a bad player; his fans refer to him as ‘Lord’, and his tally for his country is very good, but the talented young man from Copenhagen should have achieved much more before folding on his playing career.