Barcelona were forced to delete a clip shared on their social media because it showed one of their players smoking after they beat Real Madrid 4-0 in El Clasico
Barcelona goalkeeper Wojciech Szczesny was caught on camera smoking in the dressing room after their 4-0 thumping of Real Madrid.
La Blaugrana claimed major bragging rights over their La Liga rivals on Saturday evening, moving six points ahead of them at the top of the table after a Robert Lewandowski brace and goals from Lamine Yamal and Raphinha gave them a comprehensive victory at the Santiago Bernabeu.
There were naturally jubilant scenes from their players post-match, which were captured by Barcelona’s social media team. One of the videos they shared to their 131 million Instagram followers showed the players grouped together in the dressing room.
Szczesny, who came out of retirement earlier this month to provide back-up to Inaki Pena after Marc-Andre ter Stegen’s season-ending knee injury, could be seen exhaling smoke in the background, presumably from a vape.
The clip has since been deleted after it was brought to the club’s attention, but by that point it had racked up over 500k likes. Szczesny’s smoking habits have been well-documented, particularly of late after he refused to quit upon his return to football.
Defending his decision to Mundo Deportivo, he said: “There are things that I don’t change in my personal life and it’s nobody’s business if I smoke. I believe that it doesn’t affect what I do on the pitch, I work twice as hard.
“I don’t do it in front of kids because I don’t want to have a bad influence on them. Sometimes somebody will take a photo from the trees where I have a cigarette, that’s on them, not on me.
“If somebody thinks that I will change the way I am in my personal life they can think again because I am who I am. I’ve been this way my whole life.”
Szczesny’s smoked throughout his career and was once caught doing so in the showers at Arsenal. It was after a 2-0 defeat by Southampton on New Year’s Day 2015.
Recalling Arsene Wenger’s reaction, he told Arsenal’s In Lockdown podcast in 2020: “Back at that time I was smoking regularly and the boss knew it very well. He just didn’t want anybody smoking in the dressing rooms and I knew that also.
“Because of the emotion of the game, I had a cigarette after the game when the team was still in. I went in the corner of the showers, so it was at the other end of the dressing room and nobody could see me, and I lit one up.
“Somebody saw me, it wasn’t even the boss himself, and just reported it back to the boss. I saw him a couple of days later, he asked me if that was true and I said, ‘Yes’. He fined me and that was the end of it.
“He then said, ‘look, you’re going to be out of the team for a little bit’, but there was no big bust-ups or big confrontations. I was very professional about it.”
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