Nice quote from the new Watford manager on the eve of the Premier League season.
Invited to comment on allegations he had smoked in the club's dressing room at half-time during a friendly against Queens Park Rangers, former Italian international Walter Mazzarri said it was a "pure invention"claim, then added:
"But because of the job I do and I think in life sometimes there are moments where small things make you feel better and one of them for me is smoking."
Naturally, having dismissed Watford as near certainties for relegation this season, I now want them to stay up if only because Mazzarri sounds like a decent, well-balanced chap.
I'm no fan of Liverpool but I shall secretly cheer on Jurgen Klopp as well.
Klopp had barely arrived on Merseyside last year when he was photographed having a beer and a cigarette on a night out with his family.
More recently he was pictured smoking at the club's training ground and it has also been reported that he and his assistant Peter Krawietz must be allocated smoking rooms when the team stays overnight in a hotel.
The pressure on managers and coaches to conform to the current no smoking orthodoxy must be enormous. Credit to Klopp and Mazzarri for staying unapologetically true to themselves.
Elsewhere it's time for Arsenal's Jack Wilshere to demonstrate that being an occasional social smoker is no hindrance to having a successful football career (or recovering from an endless series of non-smoking related injuries).
Thankfully he's not our only standard bearer. According to this February 2015 report - Footballers (and their managers) who smoke - Carlo Ancelotti and Gianluca Vialli both smoke while Ashley Cole and Wayne Rooney are also known to "like the odd cigarette".
In a cut-throat business Ancelotti and Vialli ooze charm and bonhomie. By all accounts they are among the most likeable people in professional sport.
As player and manager Ancelotti is also one of the most successful. Whether he smokes is irrelevant. It doesn't define him, Mazzarri, Vialli or Klopp. It's the work that matters, and whether they are nice people.
The same should be true for anyone who smokes yet increasingly people are being judged not on normal criteria but on choices and habits that have nothing to do with anyone apart, perhaps, from a person's immediate family.
Vapers meanwhile have their own role model. Paul Pogba, now with Manchester United, was recently spotted using an e-cigarette while on holiday in Miami.
I've no idea if Pogba was a smoker but if it's true that, by and large, only smokers and ex-smokers vape, it's not done the world's most expensive footballer too much harm, football-wise.
Finally the Guardian this week highlighted the handful of football clubs that have had cigarette brands as their shirt sponsor.
None of them were British so what I found more interesting was a passing reference to the fact that in the 1985/86 season West Bromwich Albion wore a 'No Smoking' symbol on their shirts.
I checked what happened to West Brom that season and my suspicion was confirmed.
They got relegated.