Barcelona star spotted smoking in dressing room after beating Real Madrid in El Clasico

Barcelona's Wojciech Szczesny was spotted having a sly smoke in the dressing room following their emphatic 4-0 win over arch-rivals . The Catalan giants on Saturday evening, moving six points clear at the top of the table.

Second-half goals from Robert Lewandowski (two), Lamine Yamal and Raphinha sealed victory at the Santiago Bernabeu. There were joyous scenes amongst the squad post-match, with their social media team quick to capture them.

But in one of the clips shared to their 131million Instagram followers, Szczesny could be seen exhaling smoke in the background, presumably from a vape. The goalkeeper has after coming out of retirement to provide back-up for Inaki Pena amid Marc-Andre ter Stegen's season-ending knee injury.

The footage has since been deleted by the club after they became aware of the full contents, but it had already amassed in excess of 500k likes before its removal. Szczesny, 34, insists smoking doesn't impact his performances on the pitch.

Defending his decision to 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 has smoked throughout his career, infamously being caught indulging in a cigarette in the showers at Arsenal following a disheartening 2-0 defeat by Southampton on New Year's Day 2015. Speaking on their in 2020, he recounted Arsene Wenger's reaction.

"Back at that time I was smoking regularly and the boss knew it very well," Szczesny explained. "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."