ENGLISH PREMIER LEAGUE ARSENAL v TOTTENHAM HOTSPUR: DANIEL TAYLORtalks to Arsenal's Nicklas Bendtner who is convinced he will one day be recognised as the most prolific striker in the Premier League
Two very different images of Nicklas Bendtner’s life. Number one: December 2007, Arsenal are playing Tottenham Hotspur, the game tied at 1-1 after 74 minutes. The young substitute is stripped and ready to come on as the ball goes out for a corner.
The change is made and Bendtner is pumped up, desperate to make an impression. The ball comes over and he commits himself: win the header, get there first. It goes down as the quickest goal scored by a substitute since the Premier League was formed. The ball has been in play 1.8 seconds.
“It was the winning goal,” he remembers. “My first Premier League goal, too. That was always a big thing for me, to get that first goal, and for it to be the winner against Tottenham, with all the rivalry between the two clubs, you go through a lot of experiences as a footballer and that was an amazing one. One of the highlights of my career.”
Number two: January 2008, Tottenham are the opposition again, this time in a League Cup semi-final. But it is a horrible night for Arsenal. They lose 5-1, their heaviest defeat by the old enemy for a quarter of a century. A switch flicked in Emmanuel Adebayor’s head and his frustration finds an outlet in the bridge of Bendtner’s nose. The butt leaves the young Dane bloodied and furious and the secret is out about their feud.
Two north London derbies with very different outcomes. Welcome to the helter-skelter world of the guy who, if he gets his wish (and he is utterly convinced he will), will one day be recognised as the most prolific striker in the Premier League.
Room 11 at Arsenal’s training ground was set aside yesterday for Bendtner to lay out that masterplan with an assuredness that tells you he means every word. Inevitably the subject strays towards Adebayor, and his weapon is a forced indifference: “If you have nothing positive to say about someone, maybe you shouldn’t say anything.”
Adebayor, now at Manchester City, has adopted a very different tactic but Bendtner did not react back then and, again, he wants to come out of a strange and toxic affair with his dignity. Or, to put it another way, he does not want to stray from his favourite subject: himself.
Okay, that is a little joke at his expense but it does not need long in Bendtner’s company to realise this driven 21-year-old is brimming with self-belief and a quiet, bristling determination. “In my opinion I don’t know why anyone would question me?” is one line.
Tottenham are the visitors to the Emirates Stadium today and Bendtner is convinced he can be the hero again. But he has longer-term ambitions, too. You ask him where he imagines himself to be by the time he is 25 and he barely pauses for breath.
“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 look around at other players, I see my own ability and I can’t see anything that tells me it won’t 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 is all done.”
So, never any moments when he has self-doubt? “Not at all. There has never been any doubt in my mind about anything to do with me. You can ask the coaches when I was 16, and even the other (youth team) players. I knew back then, and I would say it openly, that I would go on to play for the first team. And they would go, ‘Huh, what makes you think it’s going to be you?’ But I always said I would make it and I had no problem telling other people about it.
“You need confidence and I have always had it. I have started this season better than I have started any other season but I know there is a lot more to come and I know the people here know that as well. So I’m quite comfortable about how things are going to progress.”
Interviewing him can feel like talking to a champion boxer. Some people will construe it as arrogance but, in sport, it is not necessarily a bad thing to hear a footballer talk with such ambition and purpose.
Bendtner is 6ft 4in and he walks tall. It has been this way, he says, for as long as he can remember, and his will to succeed compares favourably with some other young players in the Premier League. It is not enough for him he is playing for one of the biggest clubs in England. He does not want to be regarded as a good player; he wants to be exceptional.
There have been times in his young career, though, when he has polarised support. On the one hand, he is known for blocking Cesc Fabregas’s goal-bound shot in the last minutes of a Champions League quarter-final against Liverpool. On the other, he is regarded as one of the great young hopes in Arsene Wenger’s team: tall, strong, skilful and quick. Heck, he even had the nerve to wear pink boots at one stage last season and any footballer who does that has to be a good one.
“People made a big fuss because it is meant to be a girl’s colour. They were outraged because they said it shouldn’t appear in sport. Well, we are all different. I have my own opinion about what is a man and what is not a man. Yes, every young girl wants pink clothes but sometimes you’ve got to bring something different to the table.” By his own admission it was his misfortune he was not in his best form during that period. “If I had scored a few goals in them, people would have reacted totally differently.”
This season, however, he probably feels he could get away with wearing polka dot after starting the season so impressively, including scoring the winner against Liverpool in the League Cup on Wednesday. He has also been in excellent form for the Denmark team, despite his complaints that the country’s media “shoot me down, just like everyone else does”.
Wenger has been using him in a new role, operating in an advanced position on the right side of midfield. “I look at it as a compliment,” Bendtner says. “If you have a player who is that good he can play a number of different positions, then it must be a good thing. I will always be a striker but sometimes you have to do a role for the team. Not everybody can do it but I can play this position because of the player I am.”
Do not be fooled, though, into thinking this boy from Copenhagen believes himself to be invincible. In late September he was driving to training on the southbound A1 when a car cut in front of him. “I swerved to try to avoid it and the next thing I know I was in a field,” he says. “I was very lucky. I got out of the car and the first thing I did was check my body was intact. I was so worried I stripped off all my clothes to make sure everything was as it should be.”
His Bentley was written off and he had to miss the next two matches because of his injuries. “I’ve still got pain in my shoulder, I had bruised knees and bruised ankles, but I also know it was a lucky escape. I could have been killed. Or my career could have been finished.”
Instead the masterplan remains intact. "People love to be right even when they are wrong, don't they? They love to say 'No, no, no' when I tell them where I will end up. Then, when I make it, they will change it to 'Oh, I always said that would happen'. Well, you wait and see. And the doubters can say what they want." - Guardian Service
