The English Football Thread

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Spurs appointing Conte not exactly what Levy promised, but it would not be repeating a mistake

https://theathletic.com/2626557/2021/06/03/spurs-appointing-conte-not-exactly-what-levy-promised-but-it-would-not-be-repeating-a-mistake/

A proven winner who can help Tottenham take that final step to win a trophy. A charismatic leader who can impose his will on the Spurs dressing room while building up the brand in the eyes of the world. Whatever you might think about his Chelsea connections, or his short-termism, how can you argue with the medals in his cabinet?

The arguments for Tottenham appointing Antonio Conte feel very similar to those used to justify the arrival of Jose Mourinho 18 months ago. But as Daniel Levy moves closer to a sensational appointment of one of the best managers in the world, are those comparisons fair? At Chelsea five years ago, Conte came in to clean up the mess Mourinho had left behind and instantly won the Premier League title. Does that make him the right man to do so again at Spurs? Or should Levy have stuck with his promise to patiently rebuild the club?

It was only two weeks ago, remember, that Levy wrote his end-of-season message to the Tottenham fans, published on the club website and in the programme for the 2-1 home defeat to Aston Villa. He admitted that the board had “lost sight of some key priorities and what’s truly in our DNA”, effectively a mea culpa for the two glaring mistakes of the last two years: the participation in the attempted Super League, and the appointment of Mourinho.

Levy then spelt out the criteria the club would be following in their appointment of the new head coach. “We are acutely aware of the need to select someone whose values reflect those of our great club,” Levy wrote, “and return to playing football with the style for which we are known — free-flowing, attacking and entertaining — while continuing to embrace our desire to see young players flourish from our academy alongside experienced talent.”

The idea was to appoint a coach similar to Mauricio Pochettino, and what he had brought to the club back in 2014. Tottenham wanted someone to rebuild and reunify the club, to integrate academy players into the team, to create a positive coaching environment and to play the sort of front-foot football Spurs used to play. Eighteen months on from his dismissal, Pochettino remained Spurs’ benchmark.

But how many candidates like Pochettino were out there? Julian Nagelsmann had already taken the Bayern Munich job. Brendan Rodgers was not interested in Spurs at this point. Tottenham wanted Hansi Flick but he soon committed to taking over the German national team from Joachim Loew.

Eventually, Tottenham spoke to Pochettino himself, after their former manager indicated that he missed life at Spurs and might be amenable to a return to his former club. But unless Pochettino was willing to force his way out of Paris Saint-Germain, he was not going to come back to Spurs.

The next most credible candidate in that bracket was probably Erik ten Hag of Ajax, who in three and a half years in Amsterdam had won two Eredivisie titles and done so playing a style of football that looked similar to the Tottenham envisaged by Levy: full-backs pushed up, aggressively pressing midfielders, and forwards with the freedom to play.

But with the fans so set on a romantic reunion with Pochettino, Levy must have known that he could not break their hearts again. If he could not deliver Pochettino, he would still have to find someone glamorous and box office in their own right. Even if that meant departing from the principles set out in his programme notes.

Analysing the likely appointment of Conte takes you in two different directions. The first is that Conte does not exactly fit with what Levy said that he would look for. He is not a coach who trusts young players and builds for the future. He was hugely successful at Chelsea, of course, but that was in quickly building a winning team, rather than gradually bringing youngsters into his set-up.

It has felt over the last few weeks as if Tottenham might be heading for a relaunch. A reset so that they could take a step back before taking two forwards. They had tried the win-now approach, going all-in on a manager who was all about the next two years. And he only lasted 17 months.

To replace Mourinho with Conte risks making the same mistake twice. Again, Tottenham have gone for a “proven winner” to get them over the line, ignoring the fact that Pochettino had not even come close to competing for major honours when he took over seven years ago. Again, you might argue, Levy has been seduced by the prestige and cachet of appointing a box-office name, all part of his plan to grow the brand of the club. It did not work last time, so why would it work now?

But that criticism feels unfair. Yes, there are comparisons to be drawn between Mourinho and Conte. Both men are win-now coaches, who quickly build a team full of senior players, aim straight for trophies, before leaving fairly soon after falling out with everyone. But that is a bit of a caricature and a disservice to Conte.

Because no comparison between Mourinho and Conte should obscure the differences between them. When Mourinho arrived at Spurs his great years were behind him. Conte is more likely at the peak of his own powers.

When Mourinho arrived in November 2019, it was more than four years since he last won a league title. In the past four years, Conte has won two, with Chelsea and Inter Milan. Over the past 10 years, Conte has spent seven seasons in club football and won five league titles — in the same period, Mourinho has won two. Conte could reasonably claim to be one of the best managers in the world right now, up with Pep Guardiola and Jurgen Klopp. It is debatable whether the same could be said of Mourinho.

The two men might bristle at the comparison (they fell out spectacularly in early 2018) but Conte, in very simplistic terms, represents a modern, updated version of Mourinho. His teams are better drilled, better organised and fitter, with a clearer plan for how to create and score goals. If Spurs are coached by Conte they will be at the cutting edge of football again, something they have not been able to say for a while.

This is why the criticism of Levy feels misplaced. Levy has overseen a few difficult years of decline at Tottenham, with the team slipping from consecutive title challenges and a Champions League final down out of the top four and into next season’s Europa Conference League. And yet Levy is close to appointing one of the best managers in the world. It might not be what Spurs fans were hoping for last week, but it would still be a triumph.

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Former Arsenal striker Nicklas Bendtner retires from playing aged 33

https://theathletic.com/news/nicklas-bendtner-retire-arsenal-juventus/DD1HY7jekIM7

Nicklas Bendtner has confirmed his retirement from football at the age of 33.

The former Arsenal, Juventus and Wolfsburg striker scored 113 goals in a 15-year playing career.

Bendtner most recently turned out for Tarnby FF’s M+32 Old Boys team.

What has he said?

“I miss it every day, but I am also aware that there is an end date in this job. I think I’ll spend a lot of time understanding that it's really over now,” Bendtner told Bendtner & Philine on Discovery +.

“Now I will find something else that gives me what football has given me in all the years.”

Bendtner, however, did add that he is seeking to remain in the sport: “Football is a big part of my life and I can not leave it.

“That is why I am in the process of taking the coaching education. I hope it will give me as much or maybe more than it did as a player. That way, I will always be a part of football.”

What did he achieve in his career?

A product of the Arsenal youth system, Bendtner made 108 Premier League appearances in north London and scored 34 goals.

He also had loan spells at Birmingham City, Sunderland and Juventus, before joining Wolfsburg on a permanent deal in 2014.

Bendtner spent two years in Germany before returning to England for a season with Nottingham Forest in 2016-17. After then spending two seasons at Rosenborg, he returned to his native Denmark with FC Copenhagen.

Upon leaving FC Copenhagen in summer 2020, Bendtner joined Tarnby FF’s M+32 Old Boys team.

In a 12-year international career, Bendtner made 81 appearances for Denmark and scored 30 goals.

Where can I find out more?

In October, Bendtner opened up to The Athletic’s Oliver Kay about his career, his dreams and playing with his friends again in Denmark. For the full interview, Go Deeper below.

 

Go Deeper

Nicklas Bendtner: ‘I didn’t have a strong character close to me to guide me’

https://theathletic.com/2152120/2020/10/24/nicklas-bendtner-interview-arsenal/

 

Nicklas Bendtner grew up thinking he had been expelled from his first school. Only years later did he learn the truth: that at one parents’ evening, a teacher joked he had “probably not had enough oxygen at birth”. Bendtner’s father walked out, slammed the door and withdrew him immediately. Nobody was going to speak about young Nicklas like that.

So many people did, though. Bendtner was a child who alarmed people. There was the time he startled his mother by turning up on the doorstep after walking home from kindergarten. And the times he went missing at Legoland or in the airport on a holiday to Spain. And the time he was sent home from a school camping trip for being “completely unmanageable” or ending up in hot water for putting a drawing pin on a supply teacher’s chair.

“I’ve no idea why I do such brain-dead stuff,” the former Arsenal and Denmark forward reflects in his autobiography, Both Sides. “Sometimes it’s a very short path from thought to action. Or, as my Danish teacher puts it, ‘Nicklas, you don’t think before you speak.’ If my parents let me out of their sight, I destroy one thing after another. They say I take everything to pieces. And that’s how it is. I’ve got a rocket up my arse and I simply can’t sit still. If something isn’t happening, then I make it happen.”

Bendtner’s mother wondered whether he had attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and agreed for a psychologist to follow him around to monitor his behaviour. The psychologist’s conclusion was that he was “just a really lively boy”.

Maybe it was something he inherited from his father, whom he describes as “the black sheep of the family, a bit of a rascal, a womaniser, a hustler and nicknamed Mister Amager” after the island where he grew up (“Shit Island”, as Bendtner says outsiders refer to it, “the place they decided to build the sewage works”). Or perhaps from his grandfather, a heroic figure who, after fighting on the front line of the resistance movement in World War II, became a racing cyclist. He ended up cycling off a cliff on Gran Canaria.

Either way, it is hard to escape the feeling that Bendtner was born with a certain impulsive streak. And that he was encouraged to pursue it as far as it would take him.

Every Dane knows about “janteloven” — the law of Jante. Aksel Sandemose’s novel A Fugitive Crosses His Tracks features the fictional town of Jante where the people were told to abide by 10 rules, starting with, “You’re not to think you’re anything special”. It is a comment on Danish society’s reputation for conformity and the suppression of the individual.

In the Bendtner household, they took a different view. Nicklas remembers growing up with a sign in the kitchen, listing “The Bendtner Family’s 15 Rules.” The first commandment was “You ARE to think you’re something special.” The second was “You ARE to think you can do what you want. If you can’t then it’s because you don’t want to.”

Again, it seems to explain a lot.

---

At the age of 32, Bendtner is back on Amager, getting his kicks playing for Tarnby FF — not for their first team (who compete in the fourth tier of the Danish league), but their veterans’ side.

“I’m playing with all my friends from when I was growing up,” he tells The Athletic. “It’s just for the enjoyment. We always said that when the time comes, we should all play together again. So when I didn’t sign a new contract with FC Copenhagen, there was a chance to do it and I snatched it.”

In one sense, then, he is fulfilling a childhood dream.

It’s just that… well, this is the player who, at the age of 21, told The Guardian that “within five years I want to be the top scorer in the Premier League and I want to be known as a world-class striker. And it will happen. Trust me, it will happen. I’m sure people will think, ‘What is he talking about?’ But as I have done before and as I will do again, I will sit at the other end and laugh at those people when it’s all done.”

It didn’t work out that way.

There were plenty of highs — the winner in a north London derby against Tottenham within seconds of coming on as a teenage substitute, a hat-trick against Porto in a Champions League knockout tie, goals at the 2010 World Cup and Euro 2012 among the 30 he scored for Denmark — but he lost his way for many years as the goals dried up and a chaotic lifestyle took a toll.

Rather than being lauded as a world-class striker, Bendtner was lampooned not just as a wasted talent but as a victim of hubris, as “Lord Bendtner”, a figure of fun in the fledgling social media age.

 

Bendtner celebrates his dramatic winner against Spurs in 2007 (Photo: Getty)

So we go back to the start of his journey as a professional footballer, his parents in tears as he travelled up the escalator at Copenhagen Airport with a one-way ticket to London in his hand.

He was 16 years old, an outstanding prospect and, in his mind, destined for the very top. But on arrival, he encountered a back problem following a growth spurt and struggled to make an impression. At one point Liam Brady, the academy director, told him he was going to have to go back to Denmark if he didn’t buck his ideas up.

“A lot of us came from different countries, being the best in our countries and thinking we were special,” he says. “Then we came to a club like Arsenal and we found very quickly that we were one of 25 or one of 500 good young talents that were trying to get through that little gap to be a first-team player. So, of course, there was a lot of rivalry because everyone knew that maybe only one or two would go on to become professional footballers at the highest level.”

In Arsenal’s youth teams, Bentnder played up front with Arturo Lupoli and became fixated on outscoring “the dribbling, utterly selfish Italian”. He calculated it would be impossible for them both to make it at first-team level (“I’m not going to succeed if Lupoli is successful at the same time”), so an unspoken but increasingly intense competition developed between the two of them.

Lupoli, recruited from Parma, made his first-team debut at 17 in an October 2004 League Cup tie at Manchester City. Bendtner had to wait another year before making a succession of cameos in the same competition.

At first, he was invited to train with the first team on a regular basis, but then he incurred the wrath of Thierry Henry, who, when the dust had settled, gave him a two-hour lecture after training. “They say you’re a huge talent, but you still need to learn a few things, like respect and humility,” Henry told him. “Remember that, Nicklas. Respect and humility.”

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Remember the first of the Bendtner family rules? “You ARE to think you’re something special.”

That feeling was enhanced around the time he turned 18. In the space of 12 months, there was a £100,000 signing-on fee, his first-team debut for Arsenal, call-ups to the Denmark Under-21 and then senior squads in quick succession, a highly lucrative new contract. He was also developing a taste for alcohol and, to put it mildly, an eye for the ladies.

And remember the second rule? “You ARE to think you can do what you want.”

He embraced that too. He felt invincible. Nothing was going to stop him fulfilling his potential or living life to the full — even though he knows now, with the benefit of hindsight, that these two goals were pretty much incompatible.

On loan to Birmingham City in 2006-07, he set his sights on a girl who happened to be manager Steve Bruce’s daughter. His new team-mates laughed, saying he had no chance, so he accepted several £1,000 bets that he would succeed where others had failed. He ended up falling for her, which wasn’t part of the plan, and feeling guilty about accepting his winnings. But he burned through them anyway, like he did his ever-increasing wage packet: nightclubs, strip clubs, casinos, fast cars.

Bendtner would have Sunday lunch with the Bruces, playing happy families, and then hit the town, staying out until the early hours and incurring the manager’s wrath — or dismay — by turning up for the next day’s training the worse for wear. He wanted it all and it had not yet dawned on him that having it all was impossible.

Back at Arsenal, the real breakthrough came on December 22, 2007.

The derby was deadlocked at 1-1 when Arsene Wenger sent him on with 14 minutes to go, telling him, “Be the difference. They don’t know you. Use your physique.” The moment the game restarted, Cesc Fabregas hit an inswinging corner and Bendtner, leaping higher than anyone, attacked it with real force, scoring a goal that not only announced his arrival on the Premier League stage but kept a young Arsenal team top of the table and with serious hopes of winning the title.

Bendtner felt invincible. He was a teenager who was suddenly rich beyond his wildest dreams with a new five-year contract worth more than £100,000 a month. He had two Porsches on his drive, a succession of women on his arm and, as he saw it, the football world at his feet. “The goal against Tottenham was a moment where I felt completely a part of the first team,” he says. “The way it happened, to come on against Tottenham and score straight away to win the game, everything around it was magical.”

But then came a red card against Everton the following Saturday and a few weeks later, when Arsenal faced Tottenham again in the second leg of a League Cup semi-final, Bendtner also made headlines for the wrong reasons, clashing on the pitch with his team-mate Emmanuel Adebayor as training-ground tensions bubbled over in a high-pressure game. Adebayor butted his team-mate on the nose and the pair had to be pulled apart. They were both fined two weeks’ wages.

“Me and Ade didn’t get on at all,” Bendtner says, quite an understatement.

Bendtner describes Adebayor as “an odd fish”, but it was one of several running feuds at Arsenal in that era. Robin van Persie was another who clashed with Adebayor. Later, there were issues between Samir Nasri and others, including William Gallas. It sounds like an unhealthy dynamic, as if there was a lack of leadership and unity in the dressing room. “A lot of us were competing for positions,” Bendtner says. “I don’t think we had fights between us — I liked Van Persie a lot — but me and Ade? No, there was no chance of us ever being friends.”

Off the pitch, Bendtner developed more and more of a swagger. He became a magnet for the paparazzi, walking out of London nightspots with a string of beautiful women. He enjoyed the usual footballer hang-outs but he felt there were too many “gold diggers”, so ended up gravitating towards private clubs such as Boujis, where he would chat to Prince Harry (“always friendly, always down to earth”) and rub shoulders with the aristocracy. His next serious girlfriend was Caroline Fleming, a Danish baroness. That only added to the “Lord Bendtner” caricature.

For a time, he managed to work hard and play hard. He scored nine goals in all competitions for Arsenal in that 2007-08 season, 14 the next. He didn’t have the finesse of Van Persie or the power of Adebayor and he was sometimes a whipping boy for a crowd who were adjusting to a new stadium and a young team without the trophy-winning mentality of the one that went before, but he was getting somewhere. More and more, Wenger was willing to trust him.

And then two things happened in the space of five months.

Straight after Arsenal’s Champions League semi-final second leg home defeat by Manchester United in May 2009, Bendtner went out to drown his sorrows.

He remembers turning up at Boujis, but nothing else until he woke up the next day, fully dressed, in a freezing cold bath, feeling terrible, and with “an immense number” of missed calls on his phone.

He had missed the morning-after debrief at the training ground and, to make matters even worse, there were pictures all over the internet of him being bundled into a car at 4am with his jeans around his knees. Wenger was furious and fined him two weeks’ wages. To this day, Bendtner is convinced that someone spiked his drink.

Later that year, he was involved in a car crash on the A1 just north of London. His £120,000 Alfa Romeo was written off and he was lucky to walk away. It was not his fault, but it all added to the impression of a young man whose life was out of control. It wasn’t always the case, but certainly, life as a young, high-profile footballer required a balancing act that at times was beyond him.

 

Bendtner and Adebayor were kept apart by referee Howard Webb after clashing in 2008 (Photo: Getty)

Did fame change Nicklas Bendtner? Did it go to his head? Or did it merely accentuate the tendencies he was born with? Was he just enjoying himself like he would have done had he stayed in Amager, only with more money and doors opening in front of him in London?

“I’m a very curious person and I wouldn’t have been complete without it, that’s for sure,” he says. “But I was entering a new world, from being a young kid to being a young man trying to find his way. I was fond of having fun. I was also fond of girls and living life. Not just living life in terms of going out, but living life in general. I find it exciting to meet new people and to experience new stuff.”

What was the biggest distraction? The money? Drinking? Gambling? Girls?

“The whole thing,” he says. “Me as a person, being me, being so curious about so many different things. It was always ups and downs in my life. I was going from one extreme to another, all the time.”

Did Wenger know he was drinking too much?

“I’m not sure if he knew or not,” Bendtner says. “He just tried to support us as good as he could. He had a bigger picture to think about, but he was always supportive of me in difficult situations. But ‘drinking too much’ is harsh to say. I wasn’t drinking every day. It wasn’t like that. But when I would drink, I would drink.”

The way Bendtner tells the story, it sounds like he drank either when he was feeling high, full of life, or when he was feeling low.

“I was curious at the beginning,” he says. “When you’re young, you could do whatever you wanted and you would still feel fresh the next day. But I was very curious in life and that sort of lifestyle came with it. Alcohol became part of it, having a glass of wine, but then at times I would exceed that and do too much. But it was never something that got completely out of hand.”

But it took him to casinos, where he would sit at a table and gamble far too much.

“That one particular night (in 2011), for sure,” he says. “I was injured and I was in a difficult space and I was chasing that high from the pitch in the casino. But it taught me a valuable lesson, being down 400 and ending up losing 20, and it actually stopped me gambling from that day on. It helped me put things in perspective.”

The Athletic asks for clarification. When he says “being down 400 and ending up losing 20”, does he mean…?

“Thousand, yes,” he interjects.

Did the numbers mean nothing back then? Did it feel like there was an endless supply?

“No, it meant a lot. A lot,” he says. “A lot. But the stakes at the casino, if I was playing for 20 quid, in my situation back then, it gave me nothing. If I was gambling for a thousand, it gave me a little bit… and so on and so on. The higher the stakes, the higher the adrenaline rush and the higher the kick. And that’s why the stakes became so big. But that night was a clear eye-opener. I didn’t want to keep wasting my hard-earned money in the casino. I could be smarter about it.”

Did he ever stop getting that high from football?

“Never,” he says. “The greatest thing in my life — besides my son being born — is being on the pitch, feeling the grass beneath your feet and playing in front of the fans. That’s the highest rush you can ever get.”

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Arsenal haven’t won a Champions League knockout tie since March 2010.

A stunning 5-0 second-leg win over Porto at the Emirates was one of the high watermarks of the post-Invincibles era. It involved a quite wonderful goal from Nasri and a Bendtner hat-trick.

He smirks at the reminder. “Do you remember what happened the game before?” he asks.

“Not the first leg, the game before (the decider against) Porto,” he says. “We were playing Burnley and I missed four or five sitters and the fans were all, like, ‘Waheeeey!’ We won the game, but I got subbed off and it was all fun and laughs. All the papers were making jokes about me.

“And then I got to play the Porto game and I scored three goals and people in the papers were apologising for giving me such a hard time the game before. Like everything for me, it was very up and down all the time. One game I could have scored five goals but I missed all my chances with some catastrophic finishing. Then the next game, I scored a hat-trick.”

By the end of that 2009-10 season, Bendtner had made 124 appearances for Arsenal in all competitions, scoring 35 goals. It is an impressive strike rate, particularly when you consider that almost half of those appearances were as a substitute.

He had high hopes for the World Cup that summer and, although he scored only one goal, against Cameroon, that was as many as Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi and Wayne Rooney managed at the tournament combined. He was one of the few Premier League players to return from South Africa with his reputation enhanced.

From that point on, though, his Arsenal career began to unravel.

A persistent groin injury undermined him the following season, but there were other factors. The further he fell out of the first-team picture, the more he sought refuge in nightclubs or at the poker tables and it seemed to become a vicious circle. At the same time, his relationship with Baroness Caroline became strained just as she fell pregnant. He responded by proposing to her, but soon after their son Nicholas was born that December, there was an acrimonious split.

He wanted to spend as much time as possible with his son, which made it all the more problematic that he found himself out of favour at Arsenal and needing to contemplate a move. Though he wanted to stay in London, Bendtner ended up going on loan to Sunderland, almost 300 miles away. He was lured there by his old Birmingham manager Bruce, who, though he had never seen Bendtner as son-in-law material, liked him as a player and as a bloke. When the stories appeared about his casino antics, Bruce had got in touch to tell him to “Stay away from all that shit, lad. It ruins people.”

Bendtner speaks fondly of Bruce (“a good person-recogniser”) and he enjoyed working with him again as well as finding an unlikely soulmate — or drinking partner — in Lee Cattermole. “I think Sunderland was OK,” he says of his season on Wearside. “It was never my plan to sign permanently with Sunderland. My plan was to go there, perform well, gain game-playing experience with a fresh head and come back to Arsenal and start again. You want to be close to the people you love.”

But he was now 24 years old, with a glorious future behind him. So much so that a loan move to Juventus in the summer of 2012 came as a surprise. He knew he was their last resort before the transfer deadline, but he jumped at the chance and, on arrival, proposed that he might take over the No 10 shirt which had just been vacated by the legendary Alessandro Del Piero. He was instead handed the No 17, which in Italy is synonymous with bad luck. No sooner had he begun to find his rhythm than he suffered a recurrence of his groin problem and was out for five months.

It was a story of diminishing returns. He returned to Arsenal for the 2013-14 season — unhappy with Wenger for refusing to sell him to Crystal Palace — and was used sparingly. He played just 157 minutes across the 38 Premier League games, starting only one of them, but he did at least score in mid-season victories over Hull City and Cardiff City.

The problem was that his face really didn’t fit anymore. His occasional appearances were greeted with mirth, like he was a figure of fun, one step up from Gunnersaurus. And for a fiercely proud individual who had told the world he was destined for greatness, that hurt.

He finally left for good Arsenal in August 2014, joining Wolfsburg.

There were moments when the old confidence seemed to be flooding back, most notably in the 2015 German Super Cup where he scored a last-minute equaliser against Bayern Munich and then hit the winning penalty in the shoot-out, but they were few and far between. He left two years later, having scored nine goals in 47 appearances, all but 11 of them from the bench.

Next was a free transfer back to England with Nottingham Forest in the Championship, which he freely admits was fuelled by desperation on the part of the club’s owner, judging by the size of the contract he was offered, and his own desperation to be close to London. “Because my son was there,” he points out. “Nightlife wasn’t the biggest part of my life at that time, not at all. There were different things that made sense about joining Forest — the salary, being close to my son — and I was in a very difficult place when I went there. I tried to get back, but I couldn’t.”

It’s rare for a player to admit their heart wasn’t in it. “I think you can say that when you see a player leaving a massive team to go to China,” he says. “Look, I’ve always been honest, so I can be honest about this too. I was in a difficult place at that moment and that’s how I felt about it. I hoped going to Forest would help me turn things around and I would get back in the swing of things, but my other thoughts came prior. It wasn’t until I got to Rosenborg that I found myself again and found that true love of football, which I was really really happy about.”

He scored 23 goals in all competitions in his first season for Rosenborg, including an impudent strike against Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s Molde, and ended up as the 19-goal leading scorer in Norway’s top division. It wasn’t quite the golden boot he dreamed of winning a decade earlier, but, along with a championship winner’s medal and a Denmark recall, it symbolises a kind of validation.

Back in the national team, he spotted a banner in the stands that had been made in his honour. It read, “FRA LORT TIL LORD”, which he interprets loosely as “From Shit-Lord to Lord-Ship”. He loved it. Again, not quite the epitaph he would have chosen for a career, but at last, it feels like people are laughing with him again, rather than at him.

 

Bendtner won the Norwegian Cup with Rosenborg in December 2018 (Photo: Getty)

There is a story that has been told about Arsenal’s youth players being asked to fill out questionnaires for a psychological evaluation, where their self-confidence was to be measured on a scale of one to nine, and that Bendtner came out as a 10 — off the scale.

“It’s not true,” he says. “What happened was we got called into a psychological meeting where we had to rate ourselves in different aspects of the game, like heading, shooting with your left foot, shooting with your right foot. But I never scored myself at 10 for any of them, so it’s not possible that it would have been the outcome.”

His self-confidence did seem extreme, though.

“Yes, you’re right,” he says. “I said I wanted to be one of the best strikers in the world because I thought at that moment it was something achievable and I wanted to go as far in football as possible. I had very high self-belief. It was a factor for me to push myself forward and improve and want to do better.”

Was that belief genuine? Did he ever doubt himself?

“As a young player, I didn’t doubt myself much,” he says. “Football was what I wanted to do. It was my life. It has always been my life, always been the only thing I was truly very good at compared to other stuff. If I set my mind to something, I believed I could do it. When I was asked, I was scoring goals both for Denmark and for the club and I was in a good place. I felt it was achievable.”

Why does he think he fell short of those expectations, though? Why, having established in the first-team picture at Arsenal, was he not able to kick on?

“Many factors play into it,” he says. “It’s hard to say what could have happened. I would have liked to have driven it more, that’s for sure. But it’s difficult to explain why.

“I had a lot of injuries that sometimes stopped the development. You see it with lots of players where they’re coming to some sort of peak and everything is going well and then — bump — injury. Just as I was starting to get into really good shape at Juventus, I got a groin injury. Injuries are a part of my career I would really have loved to have been without.”

For all the jokes that have been made at his expense, though, Bendtner scored 30 goals for his country. That’s as many as Alan Shearer got. Only seven men have scored more goals for Denmark. If you had asked the 16-year-old Bendtner if he would have been happy with that, the answer would have been an emphatic no, because he was sure he would score more than anyone. If you ask him now though, he is proud of it.

“I did do some very good stuff,” he says. “But sometimes my antics off the field got the better of it and people seemed to forget what I did on the pitch at certain moments.”

Does he blame himself for those “antics”?

“I’m a person who always looks at myself before blaming others,” he says. “You can talk about situations that could have changed or decisions that could have made a difference. For sure, there are things I could have done differently that could have taken my career path in a different way.

“You can’t change who you are. And you probably shouldn’t want to. You should be happy for the person you are. And I have always been a curious type who had a different flow. Sometimes that cost me. Other times, it gained.”

Reading his book, it comes across that Bendtner lacked support in those early days at Arsenal. He was a young boy away from his family with more time on his hands and more money than he knew what to do with. Besides the obvious attractions, that is a situation that would bring pitfalls and temptations for many a young man — but perhaps above all for a “really lively boy” who was brought up to believe “You ARE something special” and “You ARE to think you can do what you want.”

He adores his mother, but his relationship with his dad has crumbled. “The way I found out what love was to my father,” he says, “was when I was the best at something. When I wasn’t doing well at school, he wasn’t happy. When I succeeded at football, he showed me love. So I connected my relationship with him with success. When things started turning the other way and I really needed support, I couldn’t get it. My father was along for the ride. He was also my best friend at the time, but when I needed someone, when there were small cracks in my window, he wasn’t ready to be there.”

Was there anyone there for him in those early days when he needed support? Away from his family, did he need someone in London — a manager, a team-mate, an agent, a friend, a girlfriend — to help him get a grip of his life and get through those difficult moments? “Definitely,” he says. “I didn’t have a strong character close enough to me to help and guide me, or someone I could talk to openly. I had managers who talked to me and tried, but that’s something different. I hope that these days, when you have young guys coming through, there are people you can talk to so they can support you and guide you when you don’t have the support from home.

“If you had someone to guide you and help you to quiet things down, that would help. The more support people have, the easier the decision-making and the focus becomes. If you’re left alone with everything, when you’re going from being a young kid to a young man and trying to find your way, it can be overwhelming.”

---

Bendtner is among the first footballers of his age to have written an autobiography — particularly one so raw and candid.

It sheds light on a lifestyle and a coming-of-age process very different from those experienced by the previous generation of players.

“Each person has their own story,” he says. “That’s why I wanted to write the book. I wanted to give people a proper idea of what it was like to be a footballer living with the pressure — the money, the opportunities, all the people come in and out of your world — at a time when social media started to become a big thing and you felt like you were part of that wave. To write another biography where you just put in all your glory moments and all the things that went well for you, I couldn’t do that. It was important just to say what is real and what is honest.”

That includes detailed accounts of his convictions for drink-driving in 2013 and assault in 2018. He was initially sentenced to 50 days in prison for the latter, which related to an altercation with a taxi driver, but was allowed to serve his sentence as house arrest.

“The drinking was stupid, for sure,” he says. “But the other incident, I protected my girlfriend and I would do that again. If you read about happened, you would probably do the same too. I will never apologise or feel bad for defending the people I love.”

In Denmark, he is back among his loved ones now. Son Nicholas, now nine, is there too and they see each other every weekend. Life is good — a lot calmer, a lot quieter. For now, football is just a hobby once again, playing with his mates at Tarnby.

“We compete, but obviously it isn’t a high level at all,” he says. “I’m playing centre-midfield. The last game, I played left-back. It’s just for the enjoyment. I still have a good football understanding, so I’m better being used in midfield than up front. I haven’t scored a goal yet.”

With that, he laughs. The idea of Nicklas Bendtner joking about his lack of goals would once have been unthinkable at any level of football — never mind in the over-32s side of a fourth-tier club back home in Denmark. He doesn’t take himself so seriously now. He doesn’t mind the odd joke at his own expense, just as long as people understand his story and recognise that, while he certainly fell short of his own sky-high expectations, he achieved things most of us can only dream of.

“I’m proud of my career,” he says. “I’m proud of the things I’ve achieved, the teams I’ve been part of and the personal development I went through from 18 until now. Given how it was looking at times, I’m proud of how I’ve come out. I’m looking at it with pride and I’m happy about it.

“My life has been full of ups and downs. There has been some great footballing stuff in it as well, but due to certain antics, people want to put me into a box. I understand that, but maybe the book can help that in a certain way. If not, there’s not much I can do about it.”

He isn’t quite ready, at 32, to class himself as having retired, but “nothing serious” came up in the summer transfer window. He will look again in January, but he seems relaxed about the possibility his professional career is over.

“If something good comes up (in January), I’ll think about it,” he says. “But it’s not going to stop me living how I want to, playing with my friends at a low level. And I’m doing my coaching badges in December. I’m lucky I’ve had the pleasure to work with many great managers, so maybe I can use some of that experience and try to guide and help young players.”

How would Bendtner the coach cope with a player like himself?

“I hope I would be able to help and inspire any young player and give him belief,” he says.

And a player like Adebayor?

“Sell him!” he laughs.

 

[Vesper 29,251]

A whiff of expensive cologne, a vague sense of regret and Josh King    To a door marked ‘Do One!’ Photograph: Tony McArdle/Everton FC/Getty Images Scott Murray NON-EVENTERTON There’s not much going on today, so a non-story about Everton seems an apposite direction for the Fiver to go in. You see, nothing of note has happened to the Toffees since the days of Paul Rideout, or Paul Power if you’re really trying to prove a point. The club recently got in a superstar manager in an attempt to shake things up, but look how that turned out. Though to be fair to Carlo Ancelotti, it’s hard to play football that’s easy on the eye with all the tumbleweed rolling around Goodison, this way and that, reducing each match to little more than an elaborate and never-ending game of Frogger. Everton to release five players including Josh King, Robin Olsen and Bolasie Read more Also in the not particularly long credit column of Don Carlo’s existential Everton ledger is the fact he didn’t trash the joint upon ghosting, in the way Jose totalled things at Spurs, or the way José totalled things at Manchester United. He merely left behind a whiff of expensive cologne, a vague sense of regret, and Josh King. As emotional detritus goes, it’s a relatively easy clear-up job. The club aren’t going to take up the option to extend King’s contract; they’ve been left in the lurch before, by the likes of Howard and Davie, and always bounced back; and it shouldn’t take too long to waft the final traces of Brut Trentatré out of the window. Everton therefore move on with confidence, although they’ve yet to appoint a new manager. Nuno Espírito Santo is the short-priced favourite, while you can also give bookmakers your money for a theoretical 50-fold return on Wayne Rooney, Steven Gerrard, Big Sam or, for goodness’ sake, Pip Neville. If they land the former Wolves boss, Nuno may raid his old club for Pedro Neto, because they’ll need some sort of replacement for Richarlison should he follow his former boss and fellow conspicuous underachiever to the Bernabéu. It could be a busy summer for Everton. If the Euros prove to be a bust, we might even get a couple more stories out of them. QUOTE OF THE DAY “Uefa believes in [VAR]. We really believe it is an important help for the referees. Not only for the referees but an important help for football. Of course we need to use this project in the correct way; it can also be a dangerous project. We need to be careful, we need to be clear. We need to follow the principles of the laws of the game. We want to continue to use VAR only for clear and obvious mistakes” – Roberto Rosetti, Europe’s most senior refereeing official, gets his two pence in as news of a third VAR official, with the responsibility purely for checking offside decisions, and a dedicated VAR hub in Switzerland will be deployed to ensure Euro 2020 goes smoothly. Yep, looks foolproof. HOT TIP: BUY BIG PAPER! Euro 2020 is nearly here, don’t you know, so get your free 72-page definitive guide to the tournament in Saturday’s Big Paper!  Ooooooo. Shiny supplement. Photograph: Guardian Design RECOMMENDED BOOKING Speaking of which, tickets are available now for Football Weekly Live’s Euro Not 2020 preview special on 10 June. Get them while they’re hot. FIVER LETTERS “Paul Southgate nearly nailed it yesterday with his suggestion about the most appropriate moniker for the new Conference thingy, but isn’t that just an adjective? Surely it’s got to be the Tin-pot Pot?” – Steve Allen. “In the Euro Not 2020 Team Guide for Belgium, manager Roberto Martínez is quoted as saying “I am convinced we will see the best Eden Hazard at the Euros.” Are there multiple Eden Hazards that we are not aware of? Is there some sort of Eden Hazard cloning factory in Belgium – and if so, does that explain why Real Madrid have had a slightly dud copy?” – Nick Jeffery “So a bloke with the last name Southgate just happens to win the letter of the day comp? I’m not having that. I call BS” – Taylor [Bobby?! – Fiver Ed] Robson. Send your letters to [email protected], or tweet The Fiver via @guardian_sport. Today’s winner receives a copy of A.D. Stephenson’s footballing comedy-thriller novel, A Cloud Can Weigh A Million Pounds. Congratulations to … Steve Allen. NEWS, BITS AND BOBS South Yorkshire and West Midlands police have agreed a settlement with more than 600 people to compensate them for the false police campaign aimed at avoiding responsibility for the 1989 Hillsborough disaster and blame the victims instead, which bereaved families have always said was a cover-up. David Conn with the full story. Alan Miller, the former West Brom and Middlesbrough goalkeeper, has died aged 51. Miller helped the Teesside club to promotion to the Premier League in 1995. Thomas Tuchel vows there is “far more to come” after he extended his deal at Champions League winners Chelsea to June 2024. It’s Ben McAleer on how Antonio Conte would change Tottenham’s shape and mentality. Dean Smith says Aston Villa want to be the next Leicester – presumably, the FA Cup-winning part rather than blowing Champions League qualification. Confirmed. Trent Alexander-Arnold has been ruled out of Euro 2020 after sustaining a thigh injury against Austria. The Liverpool man will be out for four to six weeks, leaving Gareth Southgate with absolutely no headache at all at right-back. STILL WANT MORE? Euro 2020: your complete guide. Everything you need to know – and maybe a bit more – about all 622 players taking part in Euro Not 2020. Pets, hobbies, heroes… we’ve got it all covered.  If you like these three, just wait until you find out about the other 619. Composite: Miles Probyn/The Guardian, AFP/Getty Images, PA Wire/Belga/PA, PA Wire More Euro goodness in our Experts’ Network team guides: get a load of Austria in part nine, while the Netherlands feature in our orange-flavoured part 10. And, talking of all things Oranje, here’s an in-depth look at Memphis Depay and how the troubled teen became a Dutch icon. The world’s most fouled footballer, Jack Grealish, says he is ready to “take the kicks” (on route 1966?) to help England win Euro 2020. Meanwhile, Jonathan Liew poses a question: why do England struggle after scoring first? The Three Lions have a far worse record than other big sides at holding on to a lead. Can Gareth Southgate provide a fix? ‘It’s hell’: the legacy of banned Yves Jean-Bart hangs over football in Haiti. Questions remain over the running of Haiti’s FA amid ‘unacceptable’ conditions for players and a visiting team held up at gunpoint. Have you got any hopes and dreams? Specifically around your country’s chances at Euro 2020, that is. If you do, why not let us know. Oh, and if it’s your thing … you can follow Big Website on Big Social FaceSpace. And INSTACHAT, TOO! *MAKES BALL SHAPE WITH HANDS*

[chippy 342]

I can't remember a time when there was so little hype or excitement around an England team going into a major tournament.

Used to love seeing lots of houses draped in England flags. I know  that's been fading away in recent years, along with fewer England fans going abroad to tournaments as well, but this year I haven't seen a single flag anywhere.

 

 

[Atomiswave 6,072]

So Pep wins manager of the year, Dias player of the year, Foden young player of the year .....what a joke, Mount deserved to win that. The bias is as always incredible.

[Pizy 18,538]

21 minutes ago, Atomiswave said:

So Pep wins manager of the year, Dias player of the year, Foden young player of the year .....what a joke, Mount deserved to win that. The bias is as always incredible.

English media is absolutely obsessed with Foden. They think he’s Eden Hazard or something when he isn’t near that level yet.

Mount is the better overall player currently and was much more important to us this season than Foden was to City. You could take Foden out of City’s team and they wouldn’t skip a beat. Mount was the heartbeat of our side. 

[Atomiswave 6,072]

7 minutes ago, Pizy said:

English media is absolutely obsessed with Foden. They think he’s Eden Hazard or something when he isn’t near that level yet.

Mount is the better overall player currently and was much more important to us this season than Foden was to City. You could take Foden out of City’s team and they wouldn’t skip a beat. Mount was the heartbeat of our side. 

Yup agree all the way, Foden will never ever reach Eden's level, he is decent but they are blowing heavy smoke up his ars double up. In what fucking world is Foden as good and instrumental as MM? Shambolic. The media has found their new darling in City and all their players. You put Mount in City and UTD and I guarantee he would have won it,

Jose: A clear bias towards Chelsea is very evident

Edited June 5, 2021 by Atomiswave

[DH1988 1,332]

Spurs new DOF wants to appoint Sarri 🤣

Edited June 5, 2021 by DH1988

[Jase 43,479]

2 hours ago, Atomiswave said:

So Pep wins manager of the year, Dias player of the year, Foden young player of the year .....what a joke, Mount deserved to win that. The bias is as always incredible.

Is it a surprise that players that play for the club that won the league won those awards? 🙄

[chippy 342]

Agree that Mount has been more important to Chelsea's success than Foden has been to City's 

Having said that, I have to be honest and say I think Foden has greater potential than Mount. If he stays free of serious injury, works hard and lives the life, he could be top 3 in the world level in a few years. Probably England's greatest natural talent since Gazza and could go onto be England's greatest ever player. 

[Atomiswave 6,072]

16 hours ago, Jas said:

Is it a surprise that players that play for the club that won the league won those awards? 🙄

Context is needed, so as long as you win the title and are decent you are per auto guarateed an accolade even though better performers exist? Nahh thats flawed imo.

15 hours ago, chippy said:

Agree that Mount has been more important to Chelsea's success than Foden has been to City's 

Having said that, I have to be honest and say I think Foden has greater potential than Mount. If he stays free of serious injury, works hard and lives the life, he could be top 3 in the world level in a few years. Probably England's greatest natural talent since Gazza and could go onto be England's greatest ever player. 

I dont get the wankathon of Foden, certainly the media have him above the clouds already ffs.......I would take Mount every time above Foden if I was a manager. He might be far superior in 2 years time ( I doubt it highly ) but atm Mount is better imo.

[Vesper 29,251]

23 minutes ago, Atomiswave said:

Context is needed, so as long as you win the title and are decent you are per auto guarateed an accolade even though better performers exist? Nahh thats flawed imo.

I dont get the wankathon of Foden, certainly the media have him above the clouds already ffs.......I would take Mount every time above Foden if I was a manager. He might be far superior in 2 years time ( I doubt it highly ) but atm Mount is better imo.

Foden is now 21

here are his stats as a 20yo year (this past season)

here are Mbappe's stats as a 19/20 yo

 

almost the same minutes, 2 and half times the goals on a far weaker team (weaker league too, bur he also was half a year younger)

and his stats the next 2 years

 

Foden stats as a 19yo

 

 

Mbappe missed a lot of games this season (2019/20) due to a hamstring issue

 

and the Mbappe last season

 

its a joke to say (like so many of the English press are now) that Foden is almost at Mbappe level

ludicrous

Mbappe has such a weak supporting cast compare to Foden, especially as Neymar is hurt half the time, or so it seems

 

[Atomiswave 6,072]

2 hours ago, Vesper said:

its a joke to say (like so many of the English press are now) that Foden is almost at Mbappe level

ludicrous

Its horseshit mate, I wonder what the mantra would be if he wasnt Eng? So far he is the annointed one in the press and can do no wrong, and seemingly hailed as mbappe level lmao.....they can all go spit.

[chippy 342]

On 06/06/2021 at 13:05, Atomiswave said:

Context is needed, so as long as you win the title and are decent you are per auto guarateed an accolade even though better performers exist? Nahh thats flawed imo.

I dont get the wankathon of Foden, certainly the media have him above the clouds already ffs.......I would take Mount every time above Foden if I was a manager. He might be far superior in 2 years time ( I doubt it highly ) but atm Mount is better imo.

Mount might well be the better player at the moment. I'm just saying I think Foden has greater potential to be a truly great player.

Foden has that sublime,  elite level first touch and ball control when running with it. Great awarerness of where he is and what's around him on the pitch. 

 

 

 

 

 

[Atomiswave 6,072]

43 minutes ago, chippy said:

Mount might well be the better player at the moment. I'm just saying I think Foden has greater potential to be a truly great player.

Foden has that sublime,  elite level first touch and ball control when running with it. Great awarerness of where he is and what's around him on the pitch. 

 

 

 

 

 

So does mount Chippy

[Blues Forever 1,232]

 

[Blues Forever 1,232]

 

[Vesper 29,251]

David Squires on … the unlikely Marxist takeover of English football

Our cartoonist on the booing of England players taking a knee, radical leftist positions and Harry Maguire’s ankle

https://www.theguardian.com/football/ng-interactive/2021/jun/08/david-squires-on-the-unlikely-marxist-takeover-of-english-football