At the Arsenal academy it is like I have come to a different world. I have to get used to no longer being the best in my age group. Here, suddenly, there is a lot of competition.
The worst bit is Tuesdays and Thursdays when we have lessons. It is like being back at school. We have all sorts of different subjects, such as press management and financial management. I thought I was done with studying and if it is possible I hate it even more than back at Amager.
One day I miss the lesson on purpose and from the ladies’ toilet I hear how they run around yelling for me like they are mad. When Liam Brady [the head of the academy] comes up to me in the canteen later he grabs hold of me and says: “What are you thinking, young man? Where have you been?”
He has heard a story about how I was hiding underneath a table. That’s not true and I tell him that with a clear conscience: “Honestly Mr Brady, I haven’t been hiding underneath a table. This is one big misunderstanding.”
That is not the only clash. Underneath Brady we have David Court. After a few months it is clear that I have got under his skin. Court can’t stand me. He can’t hide his contempt. One day I turn up wearing a baseball cap. He rips it off me and throws it on the floor and starts stamping on it with both feet simultaneously. It is like something out of a cartoon and against my own will I start to snigger. Then he shouts and jumps a bit more.
When he is done I collect my cap and walk on to the dressing room. He is surely trying to put me in my place. I have to realise that I am a little shit, a big fat zero, as long as I am still at the academy and not with the first team; that is his message.
It’s November 2004 and the problems are mounting. I have shot up length-wise in the past few years. I am no longer one of the smallest. Rather the contrary, I have gone past 1m 90cm and I am still growing. My back is protesting as it can’t keep up. It is something to do with the nerves at the bottom of my back.
One day I am called into Liam Brady’s office. I don’t expect anything to be wrong because Arsène Wenger has praised me several times when I have been training with the first team. I am wrong, though.
“Look, son,” he says. “I don’t think you understand what is at stake here, and how many boys would give their right arm to have the chance you have now. I think simply that you are not ready.”
I get a long speech. That I was a big fish in a small pond in Denmark. That I look at football as something I am automatically best at. That I shouldn’t be thinking about cars, expensive watches and model girlfriends. That is something you get when you deserve it and that the only way there is hard work.
He is staring right at me as he talks to me. His gaze doesn’t deviate an inch. I try to stare back, to show that I am strong, but I can also feel that my eyes are welling up. My mouth opens and I can hear my own voice. I am agreeing with him. Even though I am doing more than OK I am a long way from being outstanding.
“I know full well that you saw another player in Denmark but don’t drop me. It will come,” I say. Brady looks at me with a calm but penetrating gaze. “I am not sure, Nicklas. And it is not good enough to have doubt. Not at this level. You are going back to Copenhagen,” he says. “No I am not,” I say and start to cry. It is the first time I have cried in front of someone else than my parents. And suddenly I realise how much I want this. That Arsenal is my dream and that I am about to shatter the only plan I have ever made for myself. “I promise you that my attitude will change. You are going to see the real Nicklas Bendtner, I promise that,” I say.
That is what he wants to hear and we agree on a compromise. I am going home to Otto Liebes Allé to rest my back and have a proper think to see if I am ready to sacrifice what is needed.
In May 2005 I am able to sum up my first year in an Arsenal shirt. Since Brady threatened to cancel my contract I have made big strides forward. I have scored 12 goals in 18 games for the under-18s and five goals for the reserves. Increasingly I am training with the first team every week and sometimes I forget that I am just on trial with the big boys. During one session we are playing 11 v 11 with a maximum of two touches at a time. I am standing in a position to see Thierry Henry touching it three times. “Three touches,” I shout. Wenger’s assistant, Pat Rice, shouts back: “Play on, for fuck’s sake!”
But Henry has heard me. He turns in my direction and puts his finger over his lips: “Sssssssh.” Shortly afterwards I do the same. The ball touches my heel, and then my toe before I pass it on. It is one movement but the academy player gets a free-kick against him. Of course I do. I don’t think. I just start complaining, big time. I say it should be the same for everyone.
Henry tells me to shut up, this time with a lot of swear words included. And in hindsight it is good advice. But I am not taking it on. I shout back that he is the one who should shut up. He runs in my direction, confronts me, yells into my face, says all kinds of things. He totally ignores the fact that the game is going on around us.
Ashley Cole and Sol Campbell get involved: “Carry on, Nicklas, keep on running and shut your mouth.”
And I do. I become unusually calm. That is what happens if one of the best forwards in the world stands there and shouts at you.
But that is not the end of it. After training Henry comes after me. We start talking, first in the dressing room and then in the players’ lounge. I didn’t know that he had that many words in him but he does. It is a two‑hour soliloquy about everything that is needed to get to where one wants to get. For me it is an honour. It is nice of him and not something he had to do. I soak everything up and it ends with us hugging each other.
I think that’s that and that it has been dealt with. But it is not. The next month I don’t train with the first team. Not a single time. Half a year later, when I am back with the first team, I nearly start something similar again. This time it is me against Gilberto Silva. The Brazilian shouts that I should pull my finger out. He is arguably the world’s nicest man but I forget that in the heat of the moment. Instinctively I think that he should taste the same medicine, that he should shut up, but thankfully I manage to stop myself. I can still hear it: “Shut the fu … Yes-yes, Gilberto!”
When it comes to choosing my agent I am more and more leaning towards a guy with Indian heritage. Ashley Cole has good things to say about him but that is not the decisive factor in the end. It just feels right to work with someone who doesn’t constantly preach common sense and long-term career planning. I hear enough about that at the academy.
David Manasseh stands for something different. He is very matey even if there must be 20 years between us. Always keen on a good time. I need people like that in my life, in London as well. Even if I have some friends in the reserves – Fabrice Muamba and Johan Djourou – it can’t really compare to my time at the Danish club KB. People are not as warm here. They only think about the things that could get in the way of their dream. Not about living the dream. That is my big aim, even if that is some way away at the moment.
Manasseh has expensive habits and it is a great change of environment when he picks me up in his big Bentley and drives us to one of London’s best restaurants. He knows about all the places that I hear about in the first-team changing room where I, against all rules, sneak in after training.
The more I listen to them the more tempted I get. My first chat with Manasseh is at the most expensive hotel in St Albans. He says a lot of the right things. Things that I obviously want to hear when I am fighting to break through.
“You have everything you need,” he says. “No one in England has your potential.” I like the guy and his big arm movements. When we sign our contract he invites me to Nobu to celebrate. Nobu is the latest fad. Japanese cuisine meets French and at the end of the evening it turns into a bar and night club. “This is the place to be,” as Manasseh puts it.
I don’t know if that is my agent’s responsibility. But if it is my best that he wants then it is not particularly clever to introduce me to places such as Nobu. Because a few years later, when I have money, that’s where I go all the time.
With one reserve game to go I have scored 16 goals to Arturo Lupoli’s 17. Even if I have supplied a lot of assists, many of them proper gifts to Lupoli, that is not ideal. Manasseh agrees: “You should end the season as top scorer, Nicklas. That will make everything easier.”
So I go into the last game of the season with a promise to myself: I will try to finish anything that moves myself. We are playing West Ham away. They are at the bottom end of the table and we are third. In the first half I go against my own promise and give an assist to Seb Larsson. However, I get my own chances and score two goals to overhaul Lupoli at the top of the goalscoring charts.
I have just turned 18 and I am the top scorer for Arsenal’s reserves. That looks good on paper.
Nicklas Bendtner’s book is published by Politikens Forlag and is out in Danish on 5 November. Click here to order a copy