Wojciech Szczesny tells the story against himself. It comes from his first season on loan at Roma from Arsenal in 2015-16 and it shines a light on his levels of assurance but also his self-awareness.
After a good deal of anticipation, the Japanese restaurant, Zuma, has opened in Rome and Szczesny, who knows the chain from London, wants a table. The Poland and Juventus goalkeeper has a contact who he calls and it is at this point when it is easy to imagine him styling it out. However, the answer is no. The eaterie cannot accommodate him.
Back at training, Daniele De Rossi mentions how he and Francesco Totti, the captain, fancy going to Zuma. “Forget it mate, I’ve already tried,” is the gist of Szczesny’s advice. De Rossi makes the not unreasonable point that whatever Totti wants in Rome, Totti gets, but Szczesny is adamant. They have said no. The next day, De Rossi tells Szczesny he and Totti will be dining at Zuma. “Can I come?” Szczesny asks, with a smile.
Szczesny is one of those people who bring a sense of fun and mischief to many occasions. How about this season’s Champions League last-16 tie against Tottenham at Wembley, when he was a substitute on the Juventus bench? As a former Arsenal player, he took plenty of flak from the crowd but it was not all one way.
When Harry Kane watched a late header come back off the post, which confirmed Tottenham’s exit, Szczesny led a chant. “Sit down, shut up,” he bellowed. He would make the “chin up” gesture to Spurs supporters as he left the pitch and he wanted everybody to know he had enjoyed himself. “There were a couple [of Tottenham fans] – very vocal – next to my bench, who went missing after the 80th minute, so yeah, I enjoyed it,” he said.
Szczesny’s boisterous side defines him and, in a profession where public shows of personality are not always encouraged, it certainly marks him out. Yet it also masks an intelligent and driven professional, who is obsessed by the finer details that lead to improvement and who has plotted his career with such shrewdness over the past three seasons he has moved to the brink of tantalising opportunity.
It was hard for the 28-year-old to accept his Arsenal career was over. He supported the club as a boy in Warsaw and he fulfilled a dream when he joined them at 16. He continues to follow them like a fan but when Arsène Wenger signed Petr Cech in the summer of 2015 the writing was on the wall.
Szczesny acted, making a season-long loan to Roma before extending for a second season. The focus on the tactical and technical side of the game in Serie A struck a chord and he felt himself getting better and more composed, especially when making decisions.
As an aside, it did not reflect well on Wenger’s coaching regime. “Honestly, I couldn’t say from a technical standpoint that I improved in any way from when I became first choice at Arsenal until the day I left for Roma,” Szczesny said in October last year.
By then, he had completed a £10m transfer to Juventus and in his first season in Turin he has gone up another level, setting him fair for the World Cup, where Poland open their campaign against Senegal in Moscow on Tuesday.
Splitting the matches with Gianluigi Buffon, he learned from the maestro and, even better, he has been anointed by him as his successor. Buffon brought down the curtain on his glittering Juventus career at the end of the season. Szczesny started 20 matches in all competitions and kept 14 clean sheets. He became the fastest goalkeeper in Juventus’s history to reach 10 clean sheets, doing so in 14 games – nine quicker than Dino Zoff.
Szczesny is not certain to start against Senegal, which reflects Poland’s long-established strength in the goalkeeping position and, also, a theme of his career – the battle for supremacy with Swansea’s Lukasz Fabianski. It has raged for years, doing so with particular intensity when they were in competition at Arsenal between 2010 and 2014.
Fabianski started in seven of Poland’s World Cup qualifying matches to Szczesny’s three, although the latter finished the campaign as the No 1. In the friendlies since, Adam Nawalka has rotated the pair, starting Szczesny three times and Fabianski two. In each of the games at the beginning of the month – against Chile and Lithuania – the manager played them for one half each.
Szczesny is expected to get the nod and, after heartbreak at two tournaments, he feels it is his time. At Euro 2012, when Poland were the co-hosts, Szczesny started in the opening tie against Greece at the national stadium in Warsaw, which is minutes from where he used to live. He was sent off, suspended and he did not regain his place from Przemyslaw Tyton.
At Euro 2016 he once again started but was injured in the first game against Northern Ireland. Fabianski came in for the remainder of the tournament and he did well, most notably in the last-16 win over Switzerland.
Poland have high hopes at their first World Cup since 2006. Fired by the goals of Robert Lewandowski, they are eighth in the world rankings and, with Colombia to come in Group H, the importance of the Senegal tie is lost on nobody. “Everything will depend on it,” Nawalka said. “The start is critical.” Szczesny has more reasons than most for wanting to get off on the right foot.