Wojciech Szczesny interview: Retirement and Barcelona return, Arsenal and his ‘one addiction’

In September 2024, Wojciech Szczesny thought his football career was over. He had fallen out of love with football.

After leaving Juventus, the former Poland international had settled into retirement in Marbella. He was enjoying spending time with his family and hobbies — including playing the piano — with little intention of returning to the game.

Then Barcelona called. Marc-Andre ter Stegen had suffered a complete rupture of the patellar tendon in his right knee, ruling him out for the rest of the season, and the club needed an experienced replacement. Szczesny accepted what he expected to be a nine-month assignment.

Less than two years later, he is at St George’s Park, England’s national football centre in Burton upon Trent, preparing for what will be his third season at Barcelona. In his time at the Camp Nou, he has won two league titles, the Copa del Rey and two Spanish Super Cups.

Sitting down with The Athletic during pre-season, Szczesny answers questions thoughtfully, occasionally reaching into his pocket to pull out a vape, turning it over in his hands before taking a drag.

“Do you mind if…?” the 36-year-old asks.

He does not attempt to hide it. Like much else about him, he doesn’t try to hide anything.

“I never claim to be a perfect person,” he says later.

That same honesty runs through the rest of the conversation. He speaks openly about falling out of love with football, using meditation to detach emotionally from the game, embracing a supporting role behind Joan Garcia and, eventually, describing his nicotine habit as a weakness rather than pretending it does not exist.

In a sport where public image is often carefully curated, Szczesny seems more interested in being authentic than appearing to be flawless.

This is the story of someone who fell in love with football all over again.

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“When I stopped, I didn’t want to play football anymore,” he says. “I didn’t imagine anything happening after 2024. Now I’m living one of the best times of my career, and I’m loving every minute of it.

“I kind of fell out of love with football. I didn’t enjoy playing anymore. I didn’t enjoy waking up for training.

“I had one year left of my contract with Juventus, which at some point they were not able to afford.

“We decided to part ways, and I was not ready for any challenge. I didn’t want to change countries, move clubs, find new schools for the kids and find a new place. It was an easy decision (to retire) for me and the family. Once you get to a certain point of your life, family actually comes before football.”

Having made that decision, Barcelona offered Szczesny a surprising step back into the game.

“When I really settled, and I was really happy at home in Marbella, then this opportunity came, and I think it was just too big not to take it”, he says.

“I hesitated for some time. It wasn’t a straightforward decision, but it was too big. In the end, I still love the challenge, and I’m still very ambitious.

“When an opportunity like that comes along, and you have the ambition in you, and you believe in yourself… even for your own ego, you want to test yourself, and you want to see what you can do at this level.”

He arrived in Barcelona in early October 2024, but did not make his debut until January, during the Spanish Super Cup in Saudi Arabia. He needed a few months to regain the necessary fitness following his retirement.

He fell in love with Barcelona, and it wouldn’t take long for the fans to fall in love with him too: “I was already a retired footballer, and now I get to live such a beautiful moment. I’m kind of one of the fans on the pitch.

“I made a conscious decision when I came back to football. I said to myself: ‘If I make this decision, I will enjoy it at 100 per cent’.

“I do treat it as a bonus to my career. I’m going to make the most of it — I’m gonna enjoy it the way that I like to enjoy it, and it seems authentic to people. I very much feel the love back as much as I fell in love with this place and with this football club.”

During his time with Arsenal, Szczesny, as reported by UK newspaper The Independent, was fined after being caught smoking. That led to the chant Barcelona fans began singing after immediately connecting with him. They shout ‘Szczesny fumador (the smoker)’.

Barcelona have had two street parades to celebrate trophies since he joined the club. At the first one, he wore a straw hat bearing the words: ‘Fumador’ (smoker). At the second, he joined some fans in singing his chant.

“I’ve never had my own chant before, so that’s already a surprising thing,” he says. “I enjoyed it. I try to be as authentic as I can, and people seem to appreciate it.

“It might not seem the most professional thing in the world, but I am who I am. People know that I have one addiction that I cannot get rid of.

“And I think even that feels authentic to them, because I would imagine that a lot of players have certain addictions, whether it’s nicotine or alcohol or gambling, I don’t know. But there’s one player who is quite open about it, and that’s me. And it’s an addiction that I’m not even willing to fight. I embrace it, and maybe it just feels authentic to people.

“People don’t think I smoke because they saw a hidden photo of me from the paparazzi. I admitted to my addiction, and it’s an addiction that a lot of people in the world have.

“People can probably relate to it. I don’t even think about recommending people to take up smoking. I think it’s a terrible thing and everybody should avoid it. It’s a weakness of mine, but I’m fine with that weakness.”

That authenticity follows into how he acts around the rest of the squad.

“I’m aware of the persona that people see now as the oldest player in the dressing room, but the one who smiles a lot and is very relaxed. But that’s not the only thing that is behind the person. Sometimes what you show on the front page is not all that there actually is.

“I could shut up and not smile and not enjoy my life as much and try to be judged more as a professional footballer and a person who actually has this big knowledge of the game, which I can pass on to the younger players of the team. But I choose not to.”

Case in point: before this interview, Szczesny approached the young players in Barcelona’s squad, pretending to sign their shirts and taking photos with them as if they were fans. They were in fits of laughter.

This is a very common sight around the goalkeeper: he’s always in a good mood, cracking jokes and creating a great atmosphere in the dressing room. It’s one of the things head coach Hansi Flick values most about him.

When Barcelona were knocked out of the Champions League by Inter Milan in 2025, Szczesny comforted a crying Gerard Martin in the dressing room. There’s a sense that he always knows what to say.

“It’s taken a long time to be able to play with almost no emotions on the pitch”, he says. “I played for a club (Arsenal) at a very young age that I also supported as a fan, and that just took a lot out of me. Every time we won games, I cheered as a player but also as a fan — and when we lost, I was sad as a fan as well as a player. It was just a lot of emotions to deal with, and then you have to prepare for the next game in three days, and you’re kind of not ready for it.

“When I left the team, I found out that the best thing for me to perform at the best level is to be completely emotionally out of the game.

“I kind of only treated it as a job. It doesn’t sound nice, but it was what was best for me. A lot of my meditation was about calming down all the emotions and focusing only on what’s in front of me.

“It takes a little bit away from the joy of winning the game because you are not as emotionally attached to the result. But it also saves you from suffering when you lose games, when the moments are more difficult.

“I felt that was not positive for my performances. It was a conscious decision. I found meditation is one of the techniques that helps me a lot, a lot of breathing exercises.”

His days as an Arsenal player came to an end in 2017, but his commitment as a fan led him to follow their title-winning season from afar.

“I suffered a lot (during) the Champions League final. But to win the Premier League after 22 years… It’s a big relief because I’ve waited for it for a very long time and I’m very happy they built a project of probably one of the best clubs in Europe.

“When I was there, we had one season when we were on top of the league for a very long time, and we lost in the end. I felt we were the best team in the league. But we were a very young, inexperienced team, and in the end, when it mattered, we fell short.

“It still hurts because it’s the one trophy that I haven’t won in professional football that I would have loved to win… winning the Premier League with Arsenal. It’s still bugging me from the inside, but as a fan I’m very happy about what happened this year.

“Arsenal is a place where I made my dream come true. Emotionally, it’s the maximum that I believe anybody can achieve: playing for the club of your dreams. I’ve achieved the dream. It’s the peak of your career. It’s a beautiful story, although I only won three trophies with Arsenal: two FA Cups and a Community Shield.

“It will probably always be the most beautiful part of my career. The one filled with the most passion. It was also the start of my career. I was very hungry, very determined to show people that I belong at that level.”

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After nearly two decades at the top of European football, Szczesny finds himself in unfamiliar territory. For the first time in his career, he begins a season as the clear No 2 behind Barcelona’s new first-choice goalkeeper, Joan Garcia.

During their years together at Juventus, Gianluigi Buffon taught him that a veteran goalkeeper can still shape a team without making life harder for the man ahead of him. And that’s exactly what he is giving to Garcia.

“I wanted to make sure that he doesn’t feel challenged from my side. My ambition is still there, and I still believe I can give a lot of good things to the team on the pitch, but I felt that it was important that in his first season at the top level he feels all the support in the world and not a challenge from my side. (I also want) to help him grow and give him a little advice in training.

“When I see something that he can improve, it feels a little bit uncomfortable because he’s a better goalkeeper than me. But I see that he wants to learn; he wants to get new information. Sometimes there are things that maybe I can tell him, although I can’t even do them anymore (laughs) because I’m not at his level, but I feel that my knowledge of the game is big and I can still help him. He’s willing to learn.

“I had Gigi (Buffon) as my No 2 at the end of his career, and I never felt challenged by him, so this might be a subconscious decision of mine because of what I was given by Gigi, I would want to give to Joan. I’m still friends with Gigi today, and we’re still in touch.

“So hopefully when I finish playing, Joan will be able to appreciate me trying to help him and not challenge him.

“I feel needed by the team, and I feel useful even when I don’t play. That’s why I decided to renew my contract and to stay until the end of the season. It’s challenging because of the level that we have, and I want to make sure that I’m also at that level.

“It’s something that makes me proud of myself every time I finish training, and I feel that I can still do it.

“You don’t always have to be the No 1 on the pitch in order to be able to help the team and help them deal with certain situations because you have the experience. I’ve lived a lot of difficult moments, a lot of good moments.

“So I can pass the experience on to younger players. It’s a good feeling.”