I was set to be Arsenal's 'next Dennis Bergkamp' - but I gave up on football at 29
Why David Bentley’s promising career ended at 29 - and how it all unfolded for one of Arsenal’s brightest academy graduates of the era
In 2007, England’s former captain and Manchester United’s golden boy David Beckham sent shockwaves around the footballing world when he turned down an offer to extend his contract at Real Madrid and instead make the unorthodox move to the MLS to join LA Galaxy at the age of 31.
At the time, the move seemed bewildering to football experts and it was one that created a whole new problem for the England international team, who had to decide whether to include Beckham in their squad despite him playing in an inferior competition or whether the right move was to exclude him entirely and move in a new direction.
Steve McClaren, the England manager at the time, ultimately decided on the latter before declaring an up and coming Blackburn Rovers star as the new 'next David Beckham'. That footballer was former Arsenal academy sensational David Bentley.
David Bentely’s rise to prominence
Born in Peterborough, Cambridgeshire, Bentley grew up supporting Manchester United at a time where the club won everything and the likes of David Beckham, Ryan Giggs, Eric Cantona and Paul Scholes were all in their pomp.
However, he took a different path to ‘Golden Balls’ and agreed to join Arsenal’s star-studded academy aged 13. He was introduced into the first team squad to train just three years later and was subsequently handed his first professional deal. As well as the ‘Beckham’ tag weighing him down, he was also likened to another great of English football - Dennis Bergkamp.
By January 2003, he was handed his first-team debut, coming on as a substitute during a 2-0 victory over Oxford United in the FA Cup. During the Invincible season he played four times in the League Cup and twice in the FA Cup where he made the headlines with a phenomenal chip shot from the edge of the area past Mark Schwarzer in a 4-1 win.
However, he only made one league appearance in the league before spending the next two seasons on loan at Norwich in the Championship.
Bentley showed flickers of promise at Norwich, scoring twice in 26 appearances for the Canaries as they were relegated from the top-flight. He, however, admitted to Setanta Sports in 2008, that his time at Norwich had been hampered by injuries and gambling struggles as he placed around 50 to 100 bets per day.
The young footballer handed in a transfer request once he returned to Arsenal. He believed his reasons for leaving Arsenal were sound but looking back now, he thought he may have been a bit hasty, as he told The Athletic, English players weren’t getting much of a look-in, and he didn’t feel like the right fit.
“But in the years after I left, the philosophy changed and that team with so many great players in front of me was dismantled. When I left, the young lads came in. So yeah, it was just timing, even though there was a backlash when I left.”
The Blackburn Barclaysman
David Bentley is best remembered for his career at Blackburn Rovers and in many ways during this period was the embodiment of being a Barclaysman. Exciting to watch, spontaneous, technically gifted and well accustomed to scoring a long range screamer particularly from set piece situations.
Bentley secured a sixth place finish during his first year at Ewood Park, becoming the first player in the Premier League era to score a hat-trick against Manchester United, helped the club to an FA Cup semi-final in his second year while making his full England debut, and in his third year scored eight goals and provided 13 assists to earn himself a big-money move to Tottenham for £15m.
"I have played with so many good players and won the Champions League at Bayern Munich, but I can imagine David playing in the best teams in the world.” said team-mate Roque Santa Cruz at the time.
Bentley scored just one goal in 35 appearances during his first season in North London but it was certainly one to remember as he marked Harry Redknapp’s second game in charge with a 43-yard volley against Arsenal in a classic 4-4 draw. The following year, he became more of a peripheral player but did form part of the team which achieved Champions League qualification with Redknapp at the helm. However, it was during this phase that his love for the game started to fade as things became too serious.
Tottenham had just beaten Manchester City to qualify for the Champions League when a buoyant Bentley famously walked out of the dressing room with a few of the other players and, wearing his Tottenham shirt and a pair of briefs, jubilantly soaked the unsuspecting manager during his post-match interview.
“But I don’t think he was very happy when I put the bucket on his head. He’s said some things… I read the other day that he didn’t like it and maybe he’s just saying it to make his book more interesting. I did it because we’d qualified for the Champions League and it was brilliant. It was because of the feeling, the raw emotion of what we’d done. It was suggested by the other players and I went with it as always.”
He admitted to The Athletic that things changed for him during the Redknapp era and he struggled to go to work with the same excitement: “I grew up with Euro ’96 and Italia ’90, and that’s where the love of Paul Gascoigne and football came from.
“After that, that was it. I was going to be a footballer. I was five years old and that was it, ‘bang’. You see all that, and you think I want to be a part of it, I want to be in the dentist’s chair! That spirit, that’s what you wanted to be a part of. But the reality was a let-down."
He added: “Football, for me, is an art form; a creative art form that you express with natural ability, which you maximise through the dedication of being fit. But I think things changed when it became a job.
“It was a rock-star life. You’re getting paid to play football every day. It was incredible. And then it got… halfway through my career, it was like, ‘This is a job’. Even though you took it seriously before, it was still like a rock star getting on stage and singing naturally. But then, if the managers are telling them exactly how to sing, it becomes robotic and too choreographed. I’d like to see that natural element come back into the game a little bit, that off-the-cuff maverick kind of expression."
Why David Bentley called time on his career at 29
Bentley played just two more games in the league after securing Champions League football before being sent out on loan to Birmingham City, who were relegated. A brief injury-hit loan spell under Sam Allardyce’s West Ham followed before spells at FC Rostov and Blackburn before retiring at the end of his Spurs contract.
The footballer last played professionally at 28 and after being a free agent for 12 months decided at 29 to call time on his professional career. Ironically, in the same year (2013) when Beckham retired from professional football.
Bentley told TalkSport: "There's a comment that follows me around that I fell out of love with football, but I think football maybe fell out of love with me.
"I love football. Yeah, I've loved it since I first kicked a ball. I said that comment and it’s like anything, it lives with you. But I obviously do love football. I retired 12 years ago now and I’ve moved into the restaurant and hospitality business in Spain. We've got the La Sala brand that’s been doing really well and we've moved into the real estate sector now and things are flying over there.”
"Do I feel that maybe I packed up too early? Yeah. I do miss football, I miss playing and just being part of it. But I'm so occupied with my business, I've got four children, so they keep me busy. I do miss it [football], it was part of my life that I loved, I did love it and I did everything that I could to love it, but the game changed. It’s got more scientific now, the sports science has taken over.”