Vatican announces bid to make Serie A

Malcolm Moore in Rome
December 20, 2006

A SENIOR Catholic cardinal has announced that the Vatican wants to put together a soccer team of priests capable of competing in Serie A, Italy's premier league. The team would play in the colours of the papal flag - yellow and white.
"The Vatican could, in future, field a team that plays at the top level, with Roma, Inter Milan, Genoa and Sampdoria," said Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Vatican's Secretary of State, the equivalent of its prime minister.
"We can recruit lads from the seminaries. I remember that in the World Cup of 1990 there were 42 players among the teams who made it to the finals who came from Salesian training centres all over the world.
"If we just take the Brazilian students from our Pontifical universities we could have a magnificent squad."
Giovanni Trapattoni, the former Italian national team manager, who is in charge of Salzburg FC, has been mooted as coach. In 2002 Trapattoni took bottles of holy water to the World Cup in Japan and South Korea to refresh the Italian team. But his side was knocked out in the second round.
Cardinal Bertone is a fervent Juventus fan and has in the past been a soccer commentator for a northern Italian television station. Pope John Paul II was a goalkeeper in his youth, while the current Pope received Pele during the last World Cup and paid a visit to the German team's training camp.
The cardinal said soccer could play an exemplary role in the lives of young people and soccer stadiums were an ideal spot for church recruitment.
The Vatican already has a little known soccer team mostly made up of Swiss Guards. Its only international fixture, against Monaco in 2002, ended in a 0-0 draw.
Cardinal Bertone has set up a league of 16 clubs to compete in a new championship for the Clericus Cup. The league will run from February to the end of June in Rome, and will have both group and knock-out stages. In 2008 it may expand across Italy- Telegraph, London