Premier League Players Caught Smoking: Szczesny, Wilshere, Rooney

Wojciech Szczesny was fined £20,000 for smoking in the showers after Arsenal's 2-0 defeat at Southampton

Former Arsenal goalkeeper Wojciech Szczesny was reportedly caught smoking in the showers following a 2-0 defeat at Southampton on New Year's Day in 2015, a breach of club rules that reportedly brought a £20,000 fine. He is one of several Premier League figures whose smoking stories have followed them.

Headline incident: Szczesny reportedly caught smoking in the showers at Southampton on 1 January 2015
Reported sanction: Arsenal fined him £20,000
Consequence: He lost his starting place to David Ospina
Other names involved: Jack Wilshere, Wayne Rooney, Dimitar Berbatov, Mario Balotelli, Ashley Cole, Marouane Chamakh, Adel Taarabt and Aaron Lennon
Context: Modern football is defined by nutrition plans, sleep schedules and monitored recovery programmes

The numbers

£20,000: the reported fine handed to Szczesny by Arsenal
2013: Wilshere pictured smoking outside a London nightclub
2014: Wilshere photographed again during a holiday in Las Vegas
2015: a shisha pipe image involving Wilshere emerged, and Chamakh and Taarabt were pictured with a shisha pipe in 2012
1 January 2015: date of the Southampton defeat that preceded Szczesny's reported shower incident

Wojciech Szczesny: the most candid case

Few Premier League smoking incidents attracted as much attention as the one involving the former Arsenal goalkeeper. Smoking inside the stadium represented a breach of club rules, and reports claimed Arsenal fined him £20,000. He subsequently lost his starting position to David Ospina.

Szczesny has since spoken far more openly about smoking than most professional athletes. In 2026 he described nicotine as an addiction and a personal weakness, while making clear that he would never recommend smoking to other people. That candour makes him unusual: most players photographed smoking either apologise or attempt to minimise the incident. Szczesny instead acknowledged the contradiction between his habit and the standards normally expected of an elite footballer.

Jack Wilshere and the scrutiny that stuck

Jack Wilshere became one of the most frequently discussed smokers in English football after being photographed with cigarettes on several occasions. The first major controversy arrived in 2013, when he was pictured smoking outside a London nightclub. Arsène Wenger publicly expressed his disapproval, arguing that footballers had a responsibility to set an example.

Wilshere was photographed again during a holiday in Las Vegas in 2014. He later said he did not want his children to grow up believing that it was acceptable for a footballer to smoke. Another image involving a shisha pipe emerged in 2015. The repeated stories meant smoking became strangely attached to his public image, despite relatively little evidence that he was a consistent or heavy smoker.

The scrutiny was intensified by his injury record. Whenever Wilshere suffered another physical setback, critics could draw a convenient connection with the smoking photographs, even though those images did not establish the cause of his injuries.

Wayne Rooney and the lifestyle argument

Wayne Rooney was photographed smoking on more than one occasion during his Manchester United career. The pictures generally emerged during holidays or periods away from club football rather than at the training ground. They attracted attention because Rooney was one of the most prominent players in the country and carried enormous responsibility for Manchester United and England.

His fitness was regularly analysed throughout his career. His physique, diet and summer condition generated discussion that other players might have avoided, so photographs of him smoking immediately became part of a broader argument about his lifestyle. The images did not prevent Rooney from becoming Manchester United's record goalscorer and England's leading scorer at the time of his international retirement. They did, however, reinforce the impression that his approach away from football was less controlled than that of some other elite players.

Dimitar Berbatov: the cigarette as an accessory

Dimitar Berbatov may be the only footballer capable of making a cigarette look like part of a tactical plan. The former Tottenham Hotspur, Manchester United and Fulham striker appeared in several photographs holding or apparently smoking cigarettes. His relaxed playing style made the images seem almost suspiciously appropriate.

Berbatov later offered an alternative explanation: he said he would sometimes pretend to smoke because he thought it made him look cool. Whether that defence made the situation better is open to debate. It suggested the cigarette was sometimes an accessory rather than evidence of a regular habit, but it also raised the entertaining possibility of a professional footballer posing with cigarettes purely for aesthetic reasons. The story fitted his public image — he played with an apparent lack of effort, controlled difficult passes as though they were routine and often behaved as if conventional footballing urgency did not apply to him.

Mario Balotelli, Ashley Cole and the physical contradiction

Mario Balotelli was repeatedly associated with smoking during his spells with Manchester City and Liverpool. Roberto Mancini reportedly expressed frustration with Balotelli's smoking while managing him at Manchester City. The concern was not merely about appearances: coaches expect elite forwards to sustain repeated sprints and recover quickly, making smoking particularly difficult to reconcile with the physical requirements of the position. Balotelli's natural talent was rarely questioned — instead the debate concerned whether his habits and decision-making allowed him to make the most of it.

Ashley Cole was photographed smoking at different points during and after his Premier League career. The former Arsenal and Chelsea left-back was one of the finest athletes of his generation, capable of repeatedly covering the length of the pitch and defending against elite wingers, and that physical capacity made the images seem especially surprising. Cole's example is a reminder that outward performance does not necessarily reveal every aspect of a player's private lifestyle. As with many celebrity smoking stories, the pictures established that Cole smoked on certain occasions but did not provide a reliable account of the frequency of the habit.

The shisha controversy: Chamakh and Taarabt

Marouane Chamakh became involved in an unusual controversy in 2012 when he was pictured with a shisha pipe alongside Queens Park Rangers midfielder Adel Taarabt. The timing made the situation more awkward: the gathering followed QPR's victory over Arsenal, leaving supporters unimpressed that an Arsenal player had been socialising with an opponent from the team that had just defeated his club. Arsène Wenger was reportedly unhappy with the incident. Chamakh was no longer a regular starter, and the photographs did little to improve perceptions of his commitment.

Shisha can sometimes be treated as distinct from cigarette smoking because of its social setting and flavours. However, the smoke still contains harmful substances, and a long session can involve substantial exposure. Adel Taarabt was photographed at the same gathering. The incident fitted a wider public narrative surrounding the gifted QPR midfielder: he possessed outstanding close control and imagination, but questions about his fitness and application followed him throughout his English career. Any image showing him smoking was therefore likely to be interpreted as further evidence that he was not maximising his ability. That conclusion was not necessarily fair — a photograph captures one moment rather than a complete training history.

Aaron Lennon and the end of the record

Former Tottenham Hotspur and Everton winger Aaron Lennon was among the Premier League players photographed smoking away from football. The images attracted attention because Lennon's game depended heavily on explosive acceleration and repeated sprints, and smoking appeared fundamentally incompatible with the physical qualities that allowed him to trouble defenders.

Why these photographs carry disproportionate weight

The contrast is the story. Professional football is now defined by nutrition plans, sleep schedules and carefully monitored recovery programmes, so the sight of a Premier League player holding a cigarette tends to provoke a disproportionate amount of attention. A photograph taken on holiday can become front-page news, while one cigarette outside a nightclub may follow a player for years.

Wojciech Szczesny is the exception because he engaged with the contradiction rather than dodging it. Jack Wilshere and Wayne Rooney were judged through a wider argument about lifestyle and conditioning that their pictures conveniently fuelled. Dimitar Berbatov turned the whole thing into a persona. And for Ashley Cole and Aaron Lennon, the images clashed with athletic profiles built on repeated sprinting and recovery.

The honest reading is that a photograph proves an occasion, not a habit. Some footballers admitted smoking regularly, others described isolated incidents, and a few insisted they were only holding a cigarette or attempting to look cool. The scrutiny says more about how supporters connect off-field detail to on-field outcome than it does about frequency of use.

Talking points

Szczesny lost his Arsenal place to David Ospina after the Southampton incident — was the £20,000 fine and dropping a proportionate response to a breach of club rules?
Wilshere's injury record was repeatedly linked to smoking photographs that never established cause; that association was convenient, not evidential.
Berbatov said he sometimes pretended to smoke to look cool — a defence that is more revealing about image management than about health.
Cole and Lennon were among the fittest athletes of their generation; one photograph should not rewrite an entire physical profile.

What happens next

The Premier League era has produced a small, well-documented set of smoking stories, and the names above are the ones that will resurface whenever a current player is pictured with a cigarette. Szczesny's 2026 comments describing nicotine as an addiction and a weakness remain the template for how a player can address the subject honestly, even as clubs continue to treat smoking inside their facilities as a clear breach of rules.

Frequently asked questions

Was Wojciech Szczesny fined for smoking at Southampton?

Yes, according to reports. He was reportedly caught smoking in the showers after Arsenal's 2-0 defeat at Southampton on New Year's Day in 2015, and reports claimed Arsenal fined him £20,000.

Did Dimitar Berbatov really smoke, or was he pretending?

Berbatov later said he would sometimes pretend to smoke because he thought it made him look cool, though he also appeared in several photographs holding or apparently smoking cigarettes.

What happened to Jack Wilshere after he was pictured smoking?

He was pictured outside a London nightclub in 2013, which drew public disapproval from Arsène Wenger, and again on a Las Vegas holiday in 2014, with a shisha pipe image following in 2015.