{"id":63776,"date":"2026-07-31T14:59:10","date_gmt":"2026-07-31T14:59:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/63776\/"},"modified":"2026-07-31T14:59:10","modified_gmt":"2026-07-31T14:59:10","slug":"how-barcelona-made-wojciech-szczesny-fall-in-love-with-football-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/63776\/","title":{"rendered":"How Barcelona made Wojciech Szczesny fall in love with football again"},"content":{"rendered":"

The last chapter of Wojciech Szczesny<\/a>‘s career is unexpected and a whole lot of fun. After coming out of retirement to join Barcelona<\/a> at the end of 2024, the Polish shot-stopper is having the time of his life before he retires for good at the end of this season.<\/p>\n

Szczesny spoke to The Athletic<\/a> during Bar\u00e7a<\/a>‘s training camp in England and explained how playing for the Blaugrana so late in his career reignited his love for the game.<\/p>\n

“When I stopped, I didn’t want to play football anymore. 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.<\/p>\n

“I kind of fell out of love with football. I didn’t enjoy playing anymore. I didn’t enjoy waking up for training. 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.<\/p>\n

“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’.<\/p>\n

“I do treat it as a bonus to my career. I’m going to make the most of it \u2014 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.<\/p>\n

Szczesny also spoke about his role as a mentor for number one goalkeeper Joan Garcia<\/a>, and Tek wants to make sure he’s there only to help \u2014 and not threaten Joan’s place in the team.<\/p>\n

“I wanted to make sure that [Joan Garcia] 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.<\/p>\n

“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.”<\/p>\n

What a guy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The last chapter of Wojciech Szczesny‘s career is unexpected and a whole lot of fun. After coming out…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":63777,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[92,721,932],"class_list":["post-63776","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-barcelona","tag-barcelona","tag-joan-garcia","tag-wojciech-szczesny"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63776","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=63776"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63776\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/63777"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63776"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63776"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63776"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}