Wolfsburg confirm Nicklas Bendtner dropped vs. Schalke for missing training

Maybe he forgot to set his alarm clock. Maybe he got caught in traffic. Maybe he had the wrong time marked down.

Whatever the reason, Nicklas Bendtner was late for VfL Wolfsburg's training session on Friday and that was the reason why he was dropped for his side's 1-1 draw versus FC Schalke 04.

Wolfsburg manager Dieter Hecking confirmed Monday that Bendtner's omission from the squad had nothing to do with an injury and that he was set to start the fixture until arriving late to training.

"Nicklas was going to play from the beginning but our training session was clearly earlier than he thought," Hecking said, according to the Guardian. Hecking also told Danish paper BT: "As a team we have some rules that everyone should keep. When you break those rules you have to take the consequences. But we have spoken to Nicklas and everything is OK again."

Sporting director Klaus Allofs also chimed in on the incident, saying: "There are a lot of ways of finding out when training is. And it is not as if there is that much traffic in Wolfsburg."

Having only started in four of his 16 appearances, Bendtner missed out on a rare chance to feature in Wolfsburg's starting XI, and he took to Instagram to address his mistake on Monday.