Meet David Bentley – maverick Prem star who fell out of affection with soccer

David Bentley is a well-respected enterprise proprietor.

He owns a pizzeria and a nightclub in Marbella, the La Sala restaurant on a luxurious yacht resort in Gibraltar, and is now one in all three administrators at GFF Bentley & Howell Bespoke Flooring, a high-end flooring enterprise offering merchandise and cleansing providers to residential and business shoppers.

He is married to his childhood sweetheart, Kimberley Mills, and has 4 youngsters. He additionally needs to work with trendy footballers as they enter retirement, aiding their monetary choices all through an prolonged post-playing interval. Yet, this seemingly smart, mild-mannered, self-aware, clever enterprise proprietor, husband and father was not at all times so thought-about. In truth, throughout his enjoying days, Bentley was famend for his antics, his spits of laughter and outlandish behaviour. He was, in each sense of the phrase, a maverick.

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Bentley began his profession at Arsenal. He entered the Gunners academy at 13 after his household settled in north London. Beforehand, they’d moved round extensively, together with a stint in Belgium, because of his father’s work within the RAF, nevertheless it was at Highbury that his footballing goals would emerge.

He labored his approach into the Arsenal set-up, later calling Arsene Wenger the best supervisor he has ever labored with. Comparisons to Dennis Bergkamp had been made, and solely accentuated after he scored a fragile, pleasant chip towards Middlesbrough for his first senior objective, and Bentley’s prospects appeared vivid.

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“I scored that chip on my debut and maybe the crowd saw a bit of him in me,” Bentley later defined to FourFourTwo. “I had no problem with the comparison. I was terrified working with these great players, though. I s**t myself every day I went into work. I had to put on a cocky, fake act and pretend to be someone else, to get by.”

By his twenties, nevertheless, Bentley’s enjoying time had decreased and prospects had been considerably bleaker. He later admitted that he was afraid of turning into ‘nothing’ and so left, which Wenger was not proud of, saying, “‘Why do you want to leave here, you p***k?!’”

During his time at Arsenal, Bentley’s maverick facet made temporary appearances. On his first day, he rocked up in an Eric Cantona shirt, the collar stiffened and straightened, simply as the good Manchester United playmaker used to have. Cantona and Gazza had been Bentley’s heroes. He celebrated their laddish behaviour and lived as much as their caricatures.

He additionally developed a playing drawback at Arsenal. He has two racehorses and a canine and would place as much as 100 bets a day. He addressed this difficulty and recognised his habit, including that he wanted a vice however was not occupied with video video games or DVDs. But this was simply the beginning of his flashy profession, on and off the pitch.

The making of Bentley as knowledgeable came across his departure from Arsenal and arrival at Blackburn. He rolled up north in an electrical blue mustang, purchased due to his love for Steve McQueen and the movie Bullit, and started to play usually below Mark Hughes.

Bentley scored a hat-trick towards Manchester United, the day after he made his mortgage transfer to Ewood Park everlasting. His crossing skill was famend, curling scrumptious deliveries into the field, and he was earmarked as David Beckham’s substitute for England.

At Blackburn, Bentley’s wild methods continued.

He and his Rovers staff went on a wild evening out in Manchester after the United victory, which he mentioned he was happy there was no social media round for. He hosted events which may get slightly rowdy, and Hughes would generally be a part of Bentley, recounting a narrative of when the Blackburn supervisor introduced an enormous magnum of classic purple wine with him.

At the tip of the 2006/07 season, Bentley was referred to as up by Stuart Pearce to the England under-21 staff for the summer time’s European Championships. Bentley withdrew from the squad. He had performed 60 video games that season and wouldn’t have had a break earlier than the subsequent marketing campaign had England made the ultimate with Blackburn partaking within the Intertoto Cup.

Pearce was disgusted with Bentley, even going to the papers the subsequent day to publicly complain about his behaviour. But Bentley took the flak on his chin and he discovered his approach into the senior squad below Fabio Capello the subsequent season. However, regardless of the emergence as a world participant, Bentley admitted that Pearce’s perspective and the boos that he acquired when he made his worldwide debut sowed the seed for his mistrust and apathy for the sport.

It is with England that Bentley was at his wildest. He and Jimmy Bullard would name Capello ‘postman pat’, together with saying the identify as they walked previous the England supervisor. Bullard, in his ebook, Bend it Like Bullard, described Bentley as a ‘wrong’un’ and recounts the story of the midfielder shouting the nickname in Capello’s face, earlier than then including ‘and his black and white cat’.

Bullard additionally revealed Bentley managed to smuggle a McDonald’s meal into the England camp. Capello was dictatorial as England supervisor, not permitting his gamers to eat after 7pm or have tomato ketchup with their meals. One evening, Bullard was ravenous and Bentley managed to sneak a Big Mac and chips previous Capello’s safety, who had been there to maintain a detailed eye on the gamers and their behaviour.

After Bentley had advised Bullard to not fear about being hungry, “Within half an hour, there was a knock on the door and Bentley’s mate was standing there with a big McDonald’s brown paper bag filled with Big Macs and chips,” Bullard defined.

Bentley’s good kind on the pitch, and off it in some eyes, earned him a transfer again to north London, however this time to Spurs. Bentley expressed remorse at how he compelled an exit from Blackburn, however on the recommendation of Capello, who wished him to maneuver to an even bigger membership, and below the impression that Juande Ramos can be the subsequent Arsene Wenger, he made the change in a £15million transfer with a six-year deal.

Bentley instantly set about getting himself in hassle. He was fined every week’s wages for becoming a member of a mosh pit at a Kings of Leon gig, the bare-chested photos turning up in papers the subsequent morning, and struggled to pressure his approach into Ramos’ plans, even enjoying at right-back on one event.

The hapless Ramos, nevertheless, was changed by Harry Redknapp and Bentley’s performances flourished because of this. He scored a surprising volley in an enthralling 4-4 North London Derby draw towards bitter rivals and former staff Arsenal. He was enjoying usually, again within the England squad, and looking out in direction of the prime of his profession. Then, the second that Bentley describes as breaking his relationship with Redknapp and signifies the start of the tip of his short-lived profession.

After Spurs had secured qualification for the Champions League with an excellent 2009/10 season, which Bentley performed a key half in, the England man got here storming out of the dressing room, carrying solely his Spurs shirt and underpants.

Redknapp was conducting a dwell post-match interview with Sky Sports. Bentley bounded over and chucked a complete bucket of water over his supervisor, go well with and all. Bentley then put his arm round Redknapp, who was hiding his angrier emotions below a shaky smile, and jumped up and down, as if celebrating what was meant to be an enormous joke.

“He wasn’t happy; he thought I was being disrespectful. I did it because we all loved him so much,” Bentley advised FourFourTwo.

“It was just a celebration, I wasn’t trying to make him look silly,” Bentley later advised The Telegraph. “He wasn’t happy because he was trying to change his image and I went and chucked water on him. I played loads that year and there was no problem between us, but then that was the end for me.”

Bentley would play solely three extra video games for the membership. As his days wound down at Spurs, he spent a number of largely unsuccessful mortgage durations at numerous golf equipment, together with Birmingham City, West Ham, a return to Blackburn, and a six-month spell in Russia with FC Rostov, the place he grew to become the primary Englishman to ever play within the Russian league.

By this level, Bentley had fully fallen out of affection with the sport. His ultimate recreation got here for Blackburn, a 3-0 drubbing away at Cardiff City.

“My dad was at the game and he knew I was on the edge,” Bentley mentioned. “There were problems in the camp and I was getting caught up in all the political s**t. I played and I was rubbish, and at half-time, there was a big row in the dressing room. I hated that. I would always defend myself and players, but this time I wasn’t a***d.”

“We went back out, I walked around for 15 minutes and got taken off,” he continued. “I looked at my dad in the stands and just shook my head. I welled up and came off. As I took my pads off, I said: ‘This is the last game I ever play.’ And it was. That was that.”

He retired at 29, proper in his prime. But soccer was no extra eager for Bentley’s antics as Bentley was eager for the sport. The recreation had develop into extra skilled, centered, clean-cut, mild-mannered and media-trained. The love had gone. The break up was inevitable.

The maverick Bentley put his hand to different duties, ventures which were extraordinarily profitable. But wander down White Hart Lane or Ewood Park and ask about David Bentley and you’re going to get the identical response.

As Bullard so brilliantly delineated, ‘an absolute wrong’un’.