Well I'll tell you my story, I was smoking regulary from 7th grade and all the way till the end of the high school so that's 6 straight years. In my high school days I was mostly active in football. I never trained with a club and such, too lazy for that, but we used to play for over 3,4 straight hours daily and that happened few times a week. It was a lot of football back in high school days and never once did I have problems because of smoking, when I think about it most of the guys I played with smoked, some were even playing for local clubs. Point is everyone could play for hours, no one had problems with condition.
Smoking will take a little condition off you but it won't cut off your legs, if you play football regulary smoking won't be too much of a problem. All of that if you're a casual player, not a pro of course.
But if you stop playing playing for a year and then go out there you'll be dead in 10 minutes, smoker or non-smoker and I suppose that's what you did.

Don't worry I did the same recently, after like 8 months we went out for a game, man I wasn't able to walk for 4 days.