Ancelotti, Ginola, Barthez: Six funny stories about football’s famous smokers

After spotting Carlo Ancelotti heading for a smoke after his final game for Chelsea, we've been looking at some of football's famous smokers...

CARLO ANCELOTTI
Smoking has been a vice for Ancelotti since he took up the habit while injured as a 25-year-old Roma player. He was even reprimanded for smoking on the bench when he visited Celtic as manager of AC Milan in 2007. "Until three years ago in Italy you could smoke on the bench," he explains. "I used to like that, although I remember one time, when we were playing Ajax in the Champions League quarter-final in 2003, we scored in the last minute and Gennaro Gattuso jumps off the bench and grabs me from behind. I nearly swallowed the thing."

DAVID GINOLA
When David Ginola moved from Paris Saint-Germain to Newcastle in 1995, his regular post-match ciggie got him into trouble, as he told talkSPORT last year...

DIEGO MARADONA
Maradona had many vices during his playing career, but once retired he developed a love of cigars, no doubt cultivated by his friendship with Cuban leader Fidel Castro. His bizarre habit had an unwitting impact on Chelsea. At 7am on the day that Chelsea were playing Man United in the 2008/09 Premier League, a fire alarm went off at the Blues' Manchester hotel, leaving their players standing in the cold for 40 minutes. Although the official spokesman said the false alarm was due to a fault with the system, one of the firemen on the scene said, "It looks as though it was set off by Diego and his entourage smoking cigars on the 14th floor." Argentina manager at the time, Maradona was in Manchester watching Carlos Tevez, but as Tevez remained on the bench Diego instead saw a tired-looked Chelsea beaten 3-0 (virtually consigning Luiz Felipe Scolari to the sack)

Just in case you can't imagine what that might look like, here's Maradona toting merrily on his Cuban...

DAVID JAMES
As the face of Portsmouth's anti-smoking campaign in 2008, David James felt it was time to confess his 20-a-day habit, held throughout 11 years at Watford and Liverpool. "As ludicrous as it now seems," James recalled, "I spent most of my career puffing away on fags: after training, before matches and even on the team coach." Having given in to peer pressure when he was 15 years old, James was soon a heavy smoker. "Before I knew it I was on 20 a day of some of the strongest fags around. Predictably, it became one of my obsessions and I stuck religiously to one brand. If someone turned up with a packet of 'light' fags we'd paper the holes over or rip the filter off. 'Light' fags were soft."

Surprisingly, he wasn't made to stop when he signed for Liverpool. "By the time I joined Liverpool, I was quite open about my habit. I'd sit on a step with team-mates after training and puff away. I smoked in the players' lounge and on the team bus - I got away with it because the chairman did."

STANLEY MATTHEWS
Sir Stanley Matthews put his "smooth ball control" down to the "smoothness of Craven A,"  a brand of cigarette popular during World War II. The Wizard of the Dribble's generation didn't frown on smoking as long as it wasn't actually on the field, as shown by this football reporter's remarks (taken from an old Essex newspaper): "I am not anti-tobacconist, but I do not think it is at all good form for a goalkeeper to be seen smoking a cigarette in goal while the game is in progress, and for a linesman to be seen smoking a pipe. Yet both incidents occurred on Saturday at Ilford."

FABIEN BARTHEZ
Manchester United goalkeeper Barthez was known to enjoy a cigarette during his career in the Premier League and after leaving the field with an injury in a game away to Southampton, it must have seemed the perfect time to relax with a fag. When Southampton's manager Gordon Strachan returned to his smoke-free office after the game, the anger over his team's defeat turned to fury when he discovered an office full of stale smoke and an ashtray full of spent cigarettes, apparently a result of the Frenchman's bad habit. When asked about the rumour, a now calmer Strachan said he "must have been taken off for a smoker's cough".