Vatican:"Forgive me, father, for I took a dive in their area and fooled the ref into giving us a penalty."
The vexed question of ethics and morality in professional sport was discussed in the Vatican yesterday when Pope Benedict himself gave his blessing to "Progetto Soccer", an attempt to draw up a moral and ethical code for football.
The code in question has been drawn up by third division Italian side AC Ancona (currently top of the table) and the Centro Sportivo Italiano (CSI), a 63-year-old nationwide sports association founded by the influential Italian lay movement, Azione Cattolica. To say the project's aims are ambitious is an understatement.
In a long presentation in the Pontificio Oratorio San Pietro, close to the Vatican, we were told: "the project is inspired by the need to find a new and advanced balance between human development and business practice in every aspect of the life of a club, by way of antidote to all the most questionable excesses of modern football - namely frenzied commercialisation and coaching exaggeration, a total loss of any sense of limitation and the dilution of the founding values of sport."
"Progetto Soccer" is aimed not just at the Ancona first team but also at the club's fans and its youth teams. From now on the club, which went into liquidation in 2004 as the result of the fraudulent bankruptcy of its then owner, will be run along lines of total transparency, with its players tied into a salary cap incentive system, based not just on results but also on behaviour. Yellow cards, intemperate language and unsporting behaviour will cost the players dear, while to compensate for their on-the-field misdeeds, they will do social work.
The project also hopes to diffuse "an authentic sporting culture" among both fans and young players, while much attention will be paid not just to the training of apprentice footballers but also to their "social and moral education". The club hopes to make funds and players available for Third World charitable projects.
Neither the Vatican nor the CSI have bought Ancona, as has been erroneously reported. The club has agreed to implement the moral code of "Progetto Soccer" in return for sponsorship and finance from businesses sympathetic to the CSI.
The initiative does have heavyweight support, including CSI president Edio Costantini, Italian Football Federation president Giancarlo Abete, fashion mogul Santo Versace and Fr Kevin Lixey, from the Vatican's Council of the Laity.
Secretary of state Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone sent a message containing the blessing and approval of Pope Benedict. Earlier, the Ancona squad had attended a general audience in the Vatican, presenting an Ancona shirt to the Pope.
But, as one Ancona fan club wrote on its website: "the project is clearly a valid one, it will bring money to AC Ancona but allow us to have our doubts about its ability to transform the world of football."