Smoker's paradise

Anarchic Szczesny's human touch lends higher meaning to Barcelona's title push

- Jonathan Liew

Accounts differ on how late Iñaki Peña was to that team meeting in Jeddah. Some reports say two minutes; some go as high as four. Either way, Hansi Flick is nothing if not a coach of fine margins, and Peña was dropped for the Supercopa semi-final against Athletic Club in January.

His replacement: Barcelona's third goalkeeper, a 34-year-old smoker by the name of Wojciech Szczesny. I think it matters that Szczesny smokes. Not because smoking is cool, which any eye-rolling Gen Z will tell you is no longer actually true, but because there is the idea here of competing motivations: of instant versus delayed gratification. The bible of modern football reads: your body is your work. Optimise every detail. Szczesny responds by blowing smoke in your face.

There is a photo doing the rounds online of Szczesny, recently retired, pushing a trolley around a Marbella supermarket. This was the start of the rest of his life: a life of golf and beaches, family time and browsing the juice aisle. It was around this point that Szczesny's phone rang with a call from Robert Lewandowski.

It wasn't as if Szczesny was regretting retirement. He had barely been retired long enough to get bored. "I was happy," he would later say, "but being happy is not enough in life." And it is this, perhaps, that gives a sense of wider meaning to his return this season.