In the case of the brilliant Italian loon - well, of course, he's done worse in his brief and blazing career. The Italian rail authorities can at least be grateful he didn't use the facilities to let off a firework.

Balotelli's faux pas - "You have to twist Balotelli's ear, he was smoking in the toilets" the train controller told Milan's chief executive Adriano Galliano - brings to mind a jostling host of other footballers who have sullied their lungs in similar fashion. With some of them, their inclusion on the list of shame prompts no great surprise. Jimmy Greaves, for instance. Such was the way he operated in front of goal, all instinct, timing and nudges, that you could almost imagine him cupping a cigarette in his hand as he rolled the ball slyly into the corner of the net.

Greaves had the look of a smoker. He looked like a man who SHOULD smoke.

The same could be said for that more recent Tottenham performer, David Ginola. When the dashing Gaul was pictured about town with a Gauloises or a Gitanes slung in the side of his mouth, it looked, frankly, glamorous. Pictures of Ginola's fellow countryman Zinedine Zidane on the eve of the 2006 World Cup semi-final against Portugal offered a more prosaic picture – that of a man who truly needed a cigarette.

Mario Balotelli faces being fined by Milan for smoking in a train toilet while travelling with the team to Florence

The same clearly held true for the sublimely talented Johan Cruyff, who was said to smoke 20-a-day during his career, a habit which persisted all the way up to a heart bypass operation undergone in 1991. The Dutchman has subsequently appeared in anti-smoking campaigns.

Then again, Zidane appeared in such a campaign four years before the 2006 World Cup finals.

Footballers and smoking seem, historically, to go together. And the most surprising example must surely be that of Socrates, the Brazilian midfielder whose displays lit up the 1982 World Cup finals, who apparently got through two packets a day all the way through his career. And the man was a qualified medical doctor.

Having said that, our old family doctor used to smoke like a beagle...

It would be unfair, however, to imply that only footballers regularly partake of the pernicious weed. There are pictures out there of sporting figures such as Anna Kournikova, Michael Jordan and John Daly, offering evidence of cigarettage (as I believe the charge-sheet had it).

Daley's erstwhile companion on the greens, Miguel Angel Jimenez, positively revels in his non-PC smoking habit. How long can it be before the long-maned Spaniard strolls down the back nine with a Cuban cigar on the go, alternately puffing and swigging from a bottle of Riojas?

Spanish golfer Miguel Angel Jiminez celebrates another victory in inimitable style

Less than a year after securing eight gold medals at the 2008 Beijing Games, US swimmer Michael Phelps was pictured with his mouth to a bong - that is, a marijuana pipe - at a university party. Shock. Horror. Embarrassment. Phelps apologised for acting in a "youthful and inappropriate way" and posters soon appeared of him posing with the chestful of medals he had won in Beijing and carrying the superimposed and ironic message: "You'll never succeed in sports if you smoke weed – OKAY".

For some sportsmen, of course, cigarettes have been a commercial proposition. Baseball legend Mickey Mantle was pictured puffing away in advertising posters during the 1960s. A little earlier, England's paragon of health winger Stanley Matthews - who would rise around dawn each morning to inhale and exhale rigorously by an open window before embarking upon a set routine of circuit and sprint training - had espoused the "smooth" quality of Craven A cigarettes, even though he was as likely to smoke one as he was to forget the ball on his way to the byline.

Anna Kournikova insists: "My smoking has nothing to do with my tennis!

Many years later it was reported that China's Olympic and world high hurdles champion Liu Xiang was about to become the centrepiece of a campaign promoting a brand of Chinese cigarettes, only for the powers that be to rule it out.

There was no suggestion that Liu himself smoked, despite the obvious enthusiasm for cigarettes displayed by so many of his fellow countrymen. It was also reported, by no less an authority than the Reuters news agency, that 70 out of 100 athletes in the Olympic Village at the 2008 Beijing Games smoked – at least, according to the Italian weightlifter, and smoker, Giorgio de Luca. Although those figures prompt one to question what exactly it is that De Luca likes to smoke...

There may be some who feel that all the above named aberrants are automatically disqualified from the pure and noble state of role modeldom. Smoking, of course, and may I just confirm, is Not A Good Thing. There are surely many, however, who look upon this evidence of weakness or dependence at the highest level of sporting performance with something approaching warmth and understanding.

After all, Bradley Wiggins was pictured holding a cigarette- albeit in a rather odd way – during his post Tour de France and London 2012 Olympics break in Mallorca. And Bradley Wiggins can do no wrong. QED.

Mike Rowbottom, one of Britain's most talented sportswriters, covered the London 2012 Olympics and Paralympics as chief feature writer for insidethegames, having covered the previous five summer Games, and four winter Games, for The Independent. He has worked for the Daily Mail, The Times, The Observer, the Sunday Correspondent and The Guardian. To follow him on Twitter click here.