How unoriginal are football nicknames?

I suppose it's better than making a reference to a player's nationality. Robin van Persie could be "The Dutch Master" -- which may already have been given to Dennis Bergkamp -- but where do you go from there? Is Andrei Arshavin "The Mad Russian"? Is Nicklas Bendtner "The Melancholy Dane"? (Actually, no: More often than not, he's "Something Rotten in the State of Denmark.")