Play football. Hit the nightclubs. Escape a car crash. Flash some underpants. Spend time in jail. Reinvent myself. Play esports. Get engaged.
This might as well be the daily diary of a rock star. But it’s actually been the life thus far of a former footballer who once claimed he’d be among the world’s elite in no time.
Nicklas Bendtner was one of Arsene Wenger’s promising players. But his beguiling talents were in parallel to his raucous off-field antics. From escaping a car crash to being fined for flashing his pants and being jailed for 50 days, he’s done the lot.
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But how has his life turned around since? And what’s the big deal with esports? It’s time we delved into the life and times of the Danish striker in our latest Football Mavericks article for Gold Star subscribers.
Bendtner was born in Copenhagen in 1988. His first foray into the sport came as a kid in 1992, as his country was gripped with football fever following the national team’s shock victory at that summer’s Euros.
He began at Tarnby Boldklub as a child before joining FC Copenhagen’s feeder club, Kjobenhavns, in 1998. Six years later, he signed for Arsenal, aged 16. He initially looked an exciting prospect, forming a prolific strike partnership with Arturo Lupoli in the reserves.
But then the issues began. At the 2006 European Under-21 Championships, the then 18-year-old was forced to apologise to the Danish team after he criticised the decision to substitute him with fellow striker Morten Rasmussen during a group game against the Netherlands. He told the press the substitution was a mistake, asserting that he was superior to Rasmussen.
A loan move to Birmingham City, where he flourished scoring 11 goals in the Championship and helped Steve Bruce’s side win promotion to the Premier League, wasn’t enough to force his way back into contention for a starting berth at the Emirates Stadium.
By 2008, he was in and out of the Gunners’ first team. The only problem was that he really didn’t get along with fellow striker Emmanuel Adebayor.
According to the former Togo international, there was already bad blood between them after a disagreement over Bendtner’s refusal to remove his shoes in the dressing room – a club rule.
When Bendtner gave him “the finger” during a League Cup semi-final against rivals Tottenham, a physical altercation ensued. The Dane was left bleeding. Adebayor said: “Nicklas showed me the finger. I am very sorry. You cannot show a partner the finger.”
The following year, 2009, proved a rocky one for young Nicklas. That May, he was pictured leaving Boujis nightclub in west London at 4am, looking worse for wear with his belt undone and his jeans around his ankles.
A few hours earlier, he’d played the final half hour as the Gunners suffered a crushing 3-1 defeat at home by Manchester United in a Champions League semi-final.
At the start of the 2009-10 season, he announced that his squad number would change from 26 to 52. He explained that his lucky number was seven, but that team-mate Tomas Rosicky had already claimed it, so he chose 52, which is 5+2.
Later that year, he was involved in a serious car crash on the A1. Driving to training in his Aston Martin, he ended up in a field after swerving to avoid a car, which cut in front of him.
The car was written off, but he was more fortunate, walking away with bruises which led to him missing the next two matches.
He put his lucky escape down to divine intervention, saying: “I believe that somebody held his hand over me. I don’t know what or who, but looking in a broader perspective I simply felt somebody assisting me. I believe fully that this was just not my time. It was not time for my life to end.”
A few weeks later, he boldly claimed to The Guardian: “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.”
In November 2009, he was spotted in Hyde Park with Caroline luel-Brockdorff, an aristocrat 13 years his senior and with links to the Danish royal family, worth a staggering £245m.
They met when he was a guest on a TV reality show about her renovating her family seat, Valdemars Castle. Fans called him ‘Lord Bendtner’, though Caroline had actually surrendered her Baroness title upon previously marrying banker Rory Fleming – a first cousin once removed of James Bond author Ian Fleming.
They had a son together, born in December 2010. Seven weeks after his birth, they called off their engagement and split up.
Bendtner joined Sunderland on a season-long loan in 2011, vowing never to play for Arsenal again, accusing the club of not giving him enough opportunities after his car crash.
Trouble followed him in Euro 2012. He was fined £80,000 and banned for one match after he celebrated a goal by lowering his shorts to reveal Paddy Power-branded underwear.
He joined Juventus on loan the following season, but even more trouble followed. In March 2013, he was banned from driving for three years and fined £100,000 for drink-driving in Copenhagen. According to reports, he was spotted by police driving against the traffic. It earned him a six-month ban from the Denmark national team.
As for vowing never to play for the Gunners again? Well, he did. In September 2013, he made his first appearance for the club in two years. Two months later, he was cautioned for criminal damage after an incident at his luxury apartment block in Bushey, Hertfordshire – an incident for which he later apologised.
He explained: “On Saturday night after our win against Southampton, I went out with family and friends for dinner. After our dinner, we all wanted a night swim in my gym so we changed to shorts and brought towels down.
“As we arrived at the gym, my key fob changed the colour from red (locked) to green (open), but the door remained closed. We thought the door was stuck, so we tried to open it and it caused some damage.”
The following year, he got into a spot of bother again after being accused of threatening a Copenhagen taxi driver before taking down his trousers and rubbing his genitals against the vehicle.
He told a Danish newspaper: “People think I’m a psychopath. The image that people have about me is that I’m all about partying – that I’m indifferent to football – and it’s as far from reality as could possibly be.”
After being released by Arsenal in 2014, he spent the next five years playing for German side Wolfsburg, Nottingham Forest, Norwegian club Rosenborg and Copenhagen.
Bendtner would officially earn his ‘Lord’ moniker in 2015 when Danish publication SE Og HOR claimed to have bought the footballer a plot of Scottish land, allowing him to genuinely call himself Lord Bendtner. And he soon starting dating a stunning model, Philine Roepstorff.
He decided to hang up his boots in 2019. But the following incident appeared to have hastened his retirement. In November 2018, Bendtner was sentenced to 50 days in jail for assaulting another taxi driver in Copenhagen two months earlier.
During the trial, CCTV footage appeared to show him striking the driver’s jaw. He claimed he did it out of self defence after the driver threw objects at him and his girlfriend at the time for not paying the fare.
He served his sentence at home with an ankle tag. The incident proved to be his ultimate wake-up call as he revealed on an Instagram post: “If I had just paid the amount the taxi meter showed, my girlfriend and I might not have been pursued by a car with an enraged driver behind the wheel, and I wouldn’t have made the decision that I made in a split second while everything was boiling over.”
That time spent in solitude appeared to have done him the world of good. But no sooner was he free from his own house that he was forced back in it again in 2020.
The culprit this time? The Covid pandemic. But he turned that into an opportunity to rebuild himself – as a popular figure in esports. According to SPORTBible, he created an esports team named Prosapia in 2022 after falling in love with the popular shooting game Counter-Strike during lockdown.
“When the coronavirus came and I was bound by isolation, I started playing Counter-Strike,” he said. “It gave me a sense of connection to the outside world. My knowledge and interest started to grow. I learned about the esports industry and the impact it has on young people who are working very hard to reach the top.”
His Prosapia team has been dormant for two years, but Bendtner took his expertise to the next level by forming Legendary Gaming Group, an investment company which owns stakes in several esports companies.
Esports was one part of his road to redemption. In 2020, he released his explosive yet critically acclaimed autobiography Both Sides, in which he talked about the dizzying highs and lows of his career, while finding his way out of the darkness.
Still showing he has football in his heart, Bendtner moved the Legendary headquarters to a building within Denmark’s national stadium, Parken in Copenhagen, and added Denmark international right-back Peter Ankersen to the firm’s ownership group.
But all that may not have happened had he not survived another brush with death. Last November, Bendtner narrowly avoided being stabbed on the streets of New York City while visiting friends. His friend was slashed in the face and neck, but survived the attack.
After CCTV footage was released, Bendtner told Danish news outlet Ekstra Bladet: “Yes, I can confirm that it is me in the video. Could it have been me who was attacked? I have no comment about that. But I can confirm that it’s me on the video – it’s hard to run away from.”
With that incident out of the way, Bendtner is back on top of the world again. In January 2025, he announced his engagement to American model Sus Wilkins, whom he labelled on Instagram as his “ride or die”. In response, his fiancée called the proposal: “The biggest YES I could say.”
It’s been one hell of a ride for a player who first graced the English league 22 years ago as a kid, but nearly died along the way. The first half of his professional life, with its dizzying highs and depressing lows, reads like a bad fever dream.
But the second half appears rosier and Bendtner shows no signs of blowing the final whistle on his life just yet.
As he once told the Mail: “Football is only a part of your life, then you’ve got to figure out something else to do that makes you happy.”