Five World Cup-Winning Smokers

Bobby Charlton, England (1966)
Gianluigi Buffon, Italy (2006)
Ossie Ardiles, Argentina (1978)
Garrincha, Brazil (1962)
Fabien Barthez, Zinedine Zidane, and Frank Leboeuf, France (1998)

Among the endless post-mortems over why football is not, in fact, currently coming home, one area has been drastically overlooked: ciggies. And while my lawyer insists that I remind you of the many risks associated with smoking — that it causes cancer, painful death, and worst of all, makes you three times more likely to win a Nobel Prize for poetry — my conscience insists on outlining a strange fact: that many of the most compelling and enduring World Cup winners in history were smokers. (The correlation is anecdotal, not medical — though one of the best endurance athletes I know puts his lung capacity down to his former smoking habit which he likens to “high altitude training.”) Here are five of them — with notable omissions including Gianluca Vialli of Italy, who lit up a cigarette on the literal bench during Italia ‘90 in protest at being subbed of; Socrates, the Brazilian captain of the 1980s, who smoked forty a day and was known to have a beer at half time but who never won a World Cup; and Diego Maradona, who very much won a World Cup and also loved to smoke, but frankly that was the least of his vices and listen, maybe that’s an article for another time.

1. Bobby Charlton, England (1966)

The world cup winners of 1966 were a fairly loose bunch by modern standards. Captain Bobby Moore fronted a national advertising campaign that summer for pubs, urging fans to ‘look in at the local’ for a pint and some darts. Jack Charlton and striker Jimmy Greaves liked to smoke, and reportedly as many as 20 a day. But it was the talismanic Bobby Charlton who famously lit up a cigarette at half-time during that fateful final, when the score was poised at 1-1 — and then again afterwards in the changing room when England had one 4-2.

2. Gianluigi Buffon, Italy (2006)

Danish striker Nicholas Bentner recently told the BBC that, on his first day at Juventus, he walked into the bathrooms to find Italian maestros Andrea Pirlo and Gianlugi Buffon smoking in a cubicle. In 2006, meanwhile, in the hours before the fateful World Cup final in Berlin, the Italian goalkeeper had been shown footage of the French squad training that day — and was struck by a tidal wave of nerves. To calm himself, he said, he smoked a full pack of cigarettes in the corridors of the team hotel — and later shepherded his team to a 5-4 victory on penalties. Buffon was later awarded the Golden Glove as the tournament’s best keeper.

3. Ossie Ardiles, Argentina (1978)

Inspired by his chain-smoking manager César Luis Menotti, Ardiles was said to put back as many as 40 cigarettes a day during Argentina’s campaign for a home World Cup victory in 1978.

4. Garrincha, Brazil (1962)

Often described as the greatest dribbler of all time (at least, before Messi popped up), Garrincha was arguably the real driving force in Brazil’s 1960s pomp, even more so than Pele. (The team didn’t lose a single match when the two played together.) Garrincha, who famously ignored team tactics in favour of an impulsive style (his favourite trick was to beat a man, watch him recover himself, and then beat him again) played as he lived — fast and loose. He smoked 40 cigarettes a day, drank wildly, and loved the company of professional women. When he died at the age of 49 in penury, he left three ex-wives, one of them the famous samba singer Elza Soares, and 14 children to five different women, one in Sweden.

5. Fabien Barthez, Zinedine Zidane, and Frank Leboeuf, France (1998)

In their home campaign in 1998, the victorious French team were followed for five weeks by photographer Stephane Meunier for a remarkably candid photo story about their time off the pitch. Thierry Henry and David Trezeguet share a pair of wired headphones on the team bus to the last-16 clash against Portugal; Alain Boghossian shaves Fabien Barthez's head in the shower. And absolutely everyone seems to be smoking. The images, which present an oddly idyllic moment before the hyper-professionalism of the sport, also capture one of the greatest world cup winning teams of all time — led to victory that night by two headers from Zinedine Zidane, who had smoked a cigarette just before boarding the coach.

Previous Issue

Issue 23

The Five Summer Homes of the Jet Set Playboys

Five legendary summer retreats where the twentieth century’s jet set escaped, entertained and defined the golden age of Riviera glamour.

Don't miss next week

Sign up to the newsletter

Get The Friday Five and the week's best stories straight to your inbox.