BARCELONA -- Wojciech Szczesny wouldn't have believed you if you'd suggested he would be playing in the Clásico at the start of the season. He had retired from football, moved to Marbella in the south of Spain and was more concerned with lowering his handicap in golf. But he can win his second trophy as a Barcelona player on Saturday, when the LaLiga leaders meet Real Madrid in the Copa del Rey final in Seville. (stream LIVE from 3 p.m. ET on ESPN+)
Perhaps this twist, one of the most unlikely tales in European football this year, was always the destiny for a player who, in many ways, bucks the trend of the modern-day footballer. Since joining Barça, he's made as many headlines for smoking, meditating and speaking in a refreshingly honest way as he has for his performances, but it's the latter that's put him in the spotlight going into the final stretch of the campaign.
Maybe bowing out quietly at Euro 2024 with Poland last summer was no way to go for the former Arsenal and Juventus goalkeeper. Signing off with a four-trophy season at Barça would provide a much more fitting and unorthodox final chapter to his career.
"We'll see if it's one of the best [football stories ever]," the 35-year-old told ESPN. "It's interesting. It can become one of the best. We will see when we talk at the end of May."
With that said, who is to say this is the final chapter?
Barça's sporting director Deco confirmed talks have taken place to extend Szczesny's contract beyond this summer, when it's due to expire. That could give way to a battle for the No. 1 spot next season with Marc-André ter Stegen, who is due back from injury any day now, although it's unlikely Szczesny is looking that far ahead.
Instead, he wants to follow up January's Spanish Supercopa triumph with the Copa trophy on Saturday. Then he wants to win the UEFA Champions League, with Barça meeting Inter Milan in the semifinals, and LaLiga, where the Blaugrana have a four-point lead over Madrid with five games to go. (Barç also host their Clásico rivals in LaLiga on May 11.)
"The goal is obvious at this point," Szczesny said. "We are in the final part of the season and are still in every competition. I'm not planning to lose any of the games. We want to bring every trophy home. Now's the exciting part of the season, when I start to feel it."
Szczesny was playing golf in Marbella when Ter Stegen suffered a serious knee injury at the end of September in a league game against Villarreal. The first phone call came from his former international colleague, Barça striker Robert Lewandowski, to see if he would be up for filling in for the German shot-stopper. Then Deco called. Then everything changed.
Upon announcing his retirement several months earlier, Szczesny had said his "body still feels ready for challenges, but my heart is not there anymore" after 18 years of dedication to football. Watching coach Hansi Flick's young attacking team led by Lamine Yamal, Raphinha, Pedri and his old friend Lewandowski, brought it back.
"At first I didn't know, it was so fast, too random," he said. "But I was looking at the Barcelona team and I was thinking, can this team do something special this season? Yes. Will I be able to live with myself if I say no and they do something big? No.
"If I saw this Barcelona team from my sofa in Marbella, knowing that I could be a part of it, I wouldn't forgive myself."
After 14 games on the bench while Iñaki Peña played in goal, Szczesny finally made his debut against fourth-tier Barbastro in the Copa in January. There were ups and downs over the next month: He was sent off in his third appearance, the 5-2 Supercopa final win against Madrid in Saudi Arabia, and then made several mistakes in Barça's 5-4 comeback win against Benfica in the Champions League. Flick made it clear he had his backing, though, to end any media debate about whether Szczesny or academy graduate Peña would remain as No. 1 in Ter Stegen's absence.
A remarkable run of form followed. Barça had lost their final two games of 2024, but embarked on a 24-match unbeaten run at the start of 2025, with Szczesny in goal for 22 of those fixtures. If they hadn't lost to Borussia Dortmund in the Champions League last week, he would have moved level with club legend Johan Cruyff in third place for the longest undefeated streak (23 games) by a Barça player at the start of their career with the club -- only Paulinho (25 games) and Cesc Fàbregas (30 games) had better starts.
In total, he has now played 25 times, keeping 13 clean sheets and conceding 24 goals. Doubts about his ability to play behind such a high defensive line have dissipated.
"This is a team that is completely different to every team in Europe right now," he said. "Very extreme in the way they play. It's a very high risk, high reward kind of game. I've never played in a team like this. Can I adapt? It's a process.
"When you take risks and you play behind the high line, you're gonna get it wrong. There's no way of avoiding mistakes. And funny enough, it came in the [third] game and I got sent off, but I accepted it.
"I'm not here to play the conservative game. I'm trying to do what the team needs, and the team needs a goalkeeper who's brave enough to make those difficult decisions."
Barça fans have taken to him, although the song they sing is not what you might expect: they chant "Szczesny fumador"' ("smoker Szczesny"). It's a nod to the fact he has been open about his smoking.
Last weekend, at his 35th birthday party, Lewandowski's wife Anna posted on social media a photo of her and Szczesny as he wore a hat with the word "fumador" scribbled under the brim. During a long interview earlier this year, he joked someone owes him a "big thanks for going 90 minutes without a cigarette."
Even while talking to ESPN, he couldn't resist an off-the-cuff remark while praising his team for giving him so little to do at times. "It makes my job much easier because they want to defend and they block every shot, win every tackle, every header, and I can just, for the lack of a better phrase, go and smoke a cigarette," he said.
Szczesny acknowledges it's a bad habit, says he would rather not speak about it and that people should not follow his lead, but he can't help being honest. It means he can remain consistent with everything he says.
Sources detail how his honesty and personality quickly earned him the respect of his teammates, who know him as "Tek," even if he's still not sure why he's been praised by the likes of Pedri for his locker room demeanour.
"I will struggle to explain to you how I am funny because it will turn into a stand-up comedy show," Szczesny said in a news conference when asked why Pedri had labelled his teammate a funny character. "Plus I don't think Pedri understands English very well, so I am not sure why he says that. I just try to be myself."
It is an attitude so few players have these days. While many prefer to be more guarded, giving away as little as possible, Szczesny is unfiltered, funny and doesn't take himself too seriously. When that same news conference had opened with a question about possibly losing his place should Ter Stegen be match ready before the end of the season, he replied: "No warm-up, straight into the questions, eh!"
It can contrast a little with his calm persona on the pitch. "You hardly ever see him get nervous," Barça defender Eric García told ESPN. "It gives us a lot of peace of mind and security to know he's there."
Szczesny attributes that calm to meditation, which he started when he was on loan at AS Roma almost a decade ago. It was a difficult period in his life as he struggled to deal with not having a future at Arsenal, whom he says he still follows avidly. He recovered from that low to go on to play for Italian giants Juventus for seven years, where he learned from club legend Gianluigi Buffon before becoming the No. 1 in Turin. Meditation has now become a key part of his prematch preparation.
"[Ter Stegen's son] thought I was sleeping once," he said. "Because I am literally sitting down in a very relaxed position with my eyes closed and everything. It's kind of chaotic before a game, as it always is. Everybody's getting changed. This one's talking, this one's, I don't know, headphones on, and I'm just sitting there. And it does look like I'm sleeping."
That may well be the scene inside the Barça dressing room at La Cartuja on Saturday: Yamal will be enjoying his typical role as DJ, encouraging Iñigo Martínez to dance to the rapper Morad and Lewandowski to sing the latest Ozuna track, while Szczesny closes his eyes, focuses on his breathing and prepares for the next chapter of his fairy-tale comeback.
"Now, every story has an end, but in life every ending is a new beginning," he said in a social media post when he retired last summer, unaware as to what that new beginning would be and how soon it would come. "What this new path will bring for me, only the time will tell. But if the last 18 years have taught me anything, it is that nothing is impossible and believe me, I'm going to dream BIG!"