From sex scandals to banned underpants: The life & times of 'Lord' Nicklas Bendtner

Bendtner was a hit on the Danish youth scene growing up in the capital of Copenhagen, but trouble immediately followed in his wake even at that point of his career. "I was a bit hot-headed when I was younger," he later admitted as an adult.

The striker signed for Arsenal in 2005 and was tipped as one of their stars of the future, joining shortly before Emmanuel Adebayor and after Robin van Persie. In the interim, he was involved in a training ground bust-up with Thierry Henry.

"He confronts me, yells into my face, says all kinds of things," Bendtner wrote in his book of the confrontation. "Looking back now I can see that I was out of order. My head was different back then. We had this little dispute where he puts me right in my place."

Bendtner was loaned to Championship side Birmingham City in 2006, and though he was a hit at St Andrew's as Steve Bruce's men secured promotion back to the Premier League, this was the beginning of his life off the pitch hogging the spotlight. Reports emerged during the 2006-07 season that Bendtner would spend the majority of his spare time at lap-dancing clubs.

"It wasn't just lap dancing clubs five times a week. It wasn't like I was addicted to lap dancing clubs, let's get that straight! It was just going out in general," the Dane publicly rectified in 2020. "I had an injury. I had such huge respect for Steve. People I really respect I cannot lie to. I have to be completely honest. He called me in fuming. He was really upset. When he was explaining 'you've been out four times this week'. I was like 'I'm really sorry, Steve, it was five'. He didn't really know how to react. He was so mad but couldn't stop doing a giggle to himself."

To keep this soap opera storyline going, Bendtner ended up ditching these late nights and settled down into a relationship. With Bruce's daughter, Amy. The two split in 2008, probably to Steve's relief.

Despite these discretions, Arsene Wenger had seen enough potential in Bendtner to include him in Arsenal's senior squad for the 2007-08 campaign, which saw the Gunners challenge for the Premier League title. He was also handed a new five-year contract.

The season was, on the whole, a pretty decent one for Bendtner, whose return of nine goals in 40 games across all competitions was only bettered by Adebayor, Cesc Fabregas and Eduardo da Silva. He also became a hero among Arsenal fans after scoring with his first touch after coming on as a substitute to secure a 2-1 win at home to rivals Tottenham over the Christmas period. However, even in the midst of this ascension, Bendtner couldn't help getting in his own way.

During Arsenal's 5-1 loss to Spurs in the second leg of their League Cup semi-final, Bendtner headed the ball into his own net and had an on-pitch scuffle with Adebayor, which left the former with a bloodied nose. It didn't quite undo all the hard work of the season, but it definitely casts a shadow over it.

In September 2009, Bendtner believed a higher power was to thank for still being alive after his car was written off following a crash on his way into training. He missed merely a couple of weeks with minor injuries.

"I believe that somebody held his hand over me," Bendtner said at the time. "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. Had my car been smaller and less secure it could have been fatal. They [the police] did label it a miracle that this didn't end in tragedy or at least with severe injuries to me.

"I recall every single fraction of a second. I didn't pass out or lose consciousness. Somebody claimed that I was speeding at 160 km/h. I don't know where such nonsense has been invented. It is completely false. I did not travel that fast. Not at all. I have spoken to the police and there will be no case because speeding was not involved. The accident happened because a car pulled in right in front of me in the left lane. I realised that I would ram the other car a second later if I failed to react. I remember thinking: 'This will end every, very badly. I could die now'.

"So I jerked the steering wheel really hard to the right trying to avoid the other car. With success... But I did hit the hard shoulder in the middle of the road. The car spun back across the road, hit a bunch trees that luckily aren't that big. I flew into a field where the car came to a halt. Completely destroyed. I know that this could've gone much worse."

Though Bendtner appeared to make a full recovery at the time, he revealed in 2020 that he began to accumulate several smaller injuries as a result of the incident.

"The car accident was a massive setback for me," he claimed. "It was very serious. It's caused me a lot of pain and still does to this day. It changed me. I got a different kind of approach. I felt quite lucky to still be alive because it was quite a serious accident. But it just caused me a lot of small injuries and problems in the coming years and that was quite difficult to deal with as a player and as a person because you couldn't quite get where you wanted all the time because I always got stopped because of an injury or from pain."

The turbulent love life of Bendtner was showing little sign of settling, meanwhile. By the end of 2009, he claimed to have been blackmailed into paying for a former lover's boob job.

"One of the girls I’ve been with comes back and claims I've got her pregnant," he said. "That there's a price if she's going to do something about it. 'And what does that mean?' I ask.

"'It means you’ve got to pay for a pair of new boobs for me. I want my t*****s fixed,' she says. So I end up paying for her trip to the cosmetic surgeon. Another night, a girl chucks a cobblestone through the back window of one of my Porsches. I'm up in the apartment, and I can hear her shouting and screaming, but I don't go outside. There's nothing to talk about. She's p*ssed off because I don't want to keep seeing her.

"On a third night, a girl checks my phone while I'm asleep. I guess she finds out I've got a few others on the go besides her. The next morning she’s gone. So are my clothes. They’ve been thrown out of the window and are lying on the footpath."

Bendtner couldn't stay fit during Arsenal's 2009-10 and 2010-11 seasons, and so he sought to get that high from playing and scoring elsewhere as he turned to gambling.

"At times it could seem like an addiction", Bendtner said, reflecting on his actions of 2011. "I always felt I had it under control, but that night was the sort of turning point for me. I knew this isn't the lifestyle I want. When I had a lot of injuries on the pitch, I couldn't find that excitement level of going on, playing in front of 60,000. There wasn't anything that lived up to that. The only time I could get that competitive feeling was going to the casino.

"The higher the stakes, the higher the adrenaline rush. I was £400,000 down but ended up winning quite a lot of it back and only ended up losing £20,000 on the night. It felt terrible, but after I won it back I had a really hard think at the hotel when I got home and just knew that was the end of my big gambling nights. I didn't want to be just another guy who played football and lost all his money and didn't use his brain. It was important for me to go back to my roots and re-gather. Looking back now I'm happy that it happened as I may not have got that wake-up call."

So, who did Bendtner turn to in order to kick this bad habit? None other than Steve Bruce. "Steve and I had a really honest relationship," he continued. "He helped me a lot over the years and would also pick up the phone just to see what was going on. He would say 'listen, this is not the path you want to go down [gambling]. Be clever with your money, be smart with your life'. He definitely was a big factor in my early days and also further on in my career."

Bendtner was part of Denmark's squads for the 2010 World Cup and Euro 2012. It was at the latter for which he claimed headlines, again for the wrong reasons.

Bendtner scored twice as the Danes lost 3-2 to Portugal in the group stage, and after securing his brace, dropped his shorts a little to reveal his pants sponsored by gambling firm Paddy Power. As an example of ambush marketing, UEFA came down hard on Bendtner, banning him for one 2014 World Cup qualifier and fining him €100,000, which Paddy Power agreed to pay for him.

"We pride ourselves on listening to our customers and what we heard loud and clear yesterday was that Nicklas Bendtner should not suffer as a result of UEFA's double standards," a statement from Paddy Power read. "We don't believe that Nicklas should be penalised for nothing more serious than wearing his lucky underpants, which in fairness was only a bit of fun."

Bendtner did well to secure a loan move to Antonio Conte's Juventus for 2012-13, particularly after immediately being deemed by the club's fitness coach as 'too fat', but his season was cut short by injuries and another misdemeanour behind the wheel. Now 25 years of age, Bendtner was arrested for drink driving after his car was spotted heading down the wrong way of a Copenhagen street.

"I am very very sorry to all my friends and fans. It is not ok to drink and drive. I take full responsibility," he said on social media, before receiving a £97,200 fine and three-year driving ban by Danish authorities.

This episode saw Bendtner banned from the Denmark national team for half a year. "The DBU have demanded that Nicklas Bendtner take six months off to think over his international future," the Danish FA said. "The DBU respect the rights of all players to have a private life, but we also have certain rules that need to be met by international players in their public behaviour."

On the same night his Arsenal team-mates were eliminated in the Champions League last 16 by Bayern Munich in 2014, a drunken Bendtner was back in Copenhagen and accused of rubbing his genitalia against a taxi.

"He stood at the back of the car and rubbed up against the side window after unbuttoning his pants while he whipped the cab with his belt and shouted he wanted to 'f*ck me'," the taxi driver said to Danish media. "I've had drunks and alcoholics in my cab in Copenhagen over the last 25 years, but I've never experienced anything like this."

Though Bendtner (somehow) avoided arrest and prosecution on this occasion, he would be back in the Copenhagen cabbies' bad books in 2018 when he broke a driver's jaw after refusing to pay a fare equivalent to £5. Bendtner was ordered to 50 days in jail, though was allowed to complete this sentence under house arrest instead.

Amid the various scandals of his life, Bendtner actually briefly settled down and had a child in 2010. With with former Baroness Caroline Iuel-Brockdorff, a close ally of the Danish royal family. The two split shortly after the birth of their son, however.

This was the original meaning behind the infamous internet nickname 'Lord Bendtner', one which often mocked his diminishing football abilities but was taken in good humour by the larger-than-life striker. Remember the age of every meme coming with big, bold, white text? That's where this relic belonged in history.

Bendtner did, however, actually become a lord. In 2015, Danish publication Se og Hor purchased one square foot of land in Glencoe Wood in Scotland in his name. "We have seen it, and Nicklas thinks it's a fun gimmick”, Elisa Lykke, Bendtner's agent, said. "We have been asked to be sent a receipt and we are pleased that it supports a nature conservation area."

At the end of the summer 2019 transfer window, Bendtner decided to return to his boyhood club, Copenhagen. He had mixed fortunes with Wolfsburg, Nottingham Forest and Rosenborg during the twilight of his career, but seemed determined to end on a high. Fans flocked to the club shop to don the name of their hero, but would you believe it, they sold out of Bendtner home shirts.

"There has been huge interest in securing our new home jersey with Bendtner 32 on the back," shop manager Martin Nohr said. "This has meant the jersey is sold out in all adult sizes. Swift work will be done and the jersey will be in stock in all sizes again in seven to 14 days."

Bendtner's return to the capital club was short lived. He was clearly well below standard and managed only one goal in nine appearances before calling it quits, leaving and joining part-time side Tarnby FF in the lower divisions of Denmark before finally retiring in 2021.

That brought the curtain down for good on a wild and literally unbelievable career. We haven't even bothered to mention the myths here that lacked real substance to them. These are the truths of a man who truly lived on the edge.