By Larry Siddons
AP Sports Writer
Wednesday, July 1, 1998; 2:35 p.m. EDT

PARIS (AP) -- A blue cloud hangs over the World Cup, a nicotine haze that even invades the field during games.

Its source is the bench, the throne of soccer knowledge and leadership, where during every match coaches and their assistants can be seen puffing away as pressure builds and patience wears out.

While some players, particularly from Eastern European teams, are known to smoke, there hasn't been a case yet of a striker or goalkeeper lighting up in the middle of the action.

But the coaches, led by Daniel Passarella of Argentina and Herbert Prohaska of Austria, have had no qualms about feeding their habit during games. And the worldwide TV pictures of these figureheads smoking have upset the leadership of a supposedly healthy sport.

FIFA said Wednesday that it had asked coaches not to smoke on the bench or in other areas of the field.

``We have done all we could to try to get the coaches not to smoke, or at least not to smoke when the TV cameras are on them,'' federation spokesman Keith Cooper said. ``But it's the freedom of the individual. The stadiums are not a nonsmoking area. We can't send the gendarmes in on them.''

Four years ago, when the World Cup was in the United States, most of the stadiums banned smoking as part of local law. Organizers of that event said they stressed this to FIFA in making preparations for the tournament.

``We absolutely emphasized that was the situation in our stadiums, and that we had a policy of abiding by local ordinances,'' said Jim Trecker, the communications director for World Cup USA '94 and now deputy general secretary of the U.S. Soccer Federation.

Trecker said the U.S. organizers took pains to distance themselves from any possible taint of tobacco, whether it be no smoking in the stadiums or refusing sponsorship from tobacco companies.

``That was part of an overall very strict anti-smoking policy that America has with its athletics,'' Trecker said.

Still, some coaches were seen sneaking smokes in the U.S. venues. And in France, where 34 percent of men and 28 percent of women smoke and a rough-tasting Gauloises is as much a national trademark as the best champagne, the benches have become free-fire zones.

In the United States, baseball managers sometimes can be seen smoking in the dugout during games, but they are much more discreet. Florida Marlins manager Jim Leyland was caught on television several times sneaking a smoke on the bench during the World Series last fall.

But while baseball managers might try to hide it, World Cup coaches flaunt it. At one point in Tuesday night's shootout victory over England, Passarella ran out of the bench area toward the field with a cigarette in hand.

Cooper said FIFA had been approached before the tournament by a French government anti-smoking campaign to crack down on smoking coaches.

``We passed along their concern,'' Cooper said. ``We wrote to the coaches about it. It also was mentioned to the coaches during their orientation (in March). But in the pressure of the moment, it's hard for them to break a habit built up over long periods of time. We'd prefer they didn't do it.''

Unlike the policy four years ago in the United States, any anti-smoking movement here would have a hard time getting through local organizers. Michel Platini, the former French soccer star who now heads the World Cup organizing committee, is a chain smoker. Ferand Sastre, the guiding force behind France's efforts to stage the Cup, died last month after a long fight with lung cancer.

Cooper said that if FIFA couldn't get the coaches to quit, it at least wanted to try to protect soccer's image. He said the federation had asked TV directors to try to avoid camera shots of coaches smoking.