It seems apt that the Vatican-approved crusade to save professional soccer's soul should begin with AC Ancona, a team in the Italian third division.
The idea of giving the sport an ethical and moral dimension is potentially the most exciting development since Holland's "total football" of the 1970s. But this is likely to be an uphill struggle. It will take several seasons - and good luck with injuries - before either Ancona or organised morality can be expected to feature in the group stages of the Champions League.
It is apt too that the club should have launched "Progetto Soccer" by presenting a Number 16 shirt to Pope Benedict. The No. 16 is most famous in football for being worn during his Manchester United years by Roy Keane, now one of the foremost moral leaders, not just in British soccer, but in Britain generally.
Admittedly, for most of his playing career, Keane's fierce sense of justice leant perhaps a little too heavily on the Old Testament. "I will render vengeance to mine enemies, and will reward them that hate me" (Deut 32:41) was his cry. For more than a decade, his eye-for-an-eye, cruciate-for-a-cruciate approach was a cause of concern to opposing midfielders and liberal Christians alike.
Since becoming a manager, however, he has mellowed. Great is his righteousness, still, but the message has been refined for a broader audience. His recent encyclical on materialism - and specifically on the dangers of excessive shopping by footballers' wives - was a masterpiece of moral clarity. I expect him to issue an epistle on the subject of gamesmanship soon.
It is interesting that, without any Vatican involvement, rugby has already gone further than soccer in introducing Catholic concepts into its games. Penance, for example. Rugby players may now atone for wrong-doings by spending a period in the "sin-bin", after which they emerge cleansed and vowing never to do anything bad again, until the next time.
Furthermore, modern rugby referees provide constant moral guidance to players during the game, rather like priests in the trenches. Whenever potential occasions of sin occur, the referee is there like a guardian angel, nagging the players involved - "Roll away, blue!" "Don't touch it, green!" - before they fall into temptation.
Of course this approach was to some extent forced on rugby because so much of its rule book is, like the All-Blacks' second strip, a bit of a grey area. Even so, it may point the way forward for soccer referees.
Henceforth they too could issue spiritual counsel on the run, constantly reminding players of the moral code, instead of just reacting to breaches of it. Thus, whenever Cristiano Ronaldo sprints into the opposition penalty box at Old Trafford, the referee would be shouting after him: "Don't fall over for no reason, red!" "Don't kick him, blue - no matter how much he's asking for it!" And so on.
I mention Ronaldo, because it is an article of faith in English soccer that diving - and every other form of gamesmanship - was introduced there in recent times by "continental" players. But there is nothing new in this prejudice. Writing more than 60 years ago, George Orwell described football as "a game in which everyone gets hurt and every nation has its own style of play which seems unfair to foreigners".
The great essayist was not a sports fan. He blamed its popularity on sedentary lifestyles, seeing organised games as a regrettable feature of urban life, much like bad housing. "In a rustic community," he wrote, "a boy or a young man works off a good deal of his surplus energy by walking, swimming, snowballing, climbing trees, and by various sports involving cruelty to animals, such as fishing, cock-fighting and ferreting for rats".
Even allowing for Orwell's romantic view of country life, his urban-rural thesis is somewhat undermined by the success of the GAA - with which he can be excused for being unfamiliar. But the main theme of his essay was that football pitches are morality-free zones. "Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play," he thundered. "It is bound up with jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence: in other words it is war minus the shooting." If there is a hopeful note for sports fans in Orwell's essay, it is that it was written in December 1945, a time when war minus the shooting represented a marked improvement on the situation of a year earlier. At any rate, six decades later, shooting remains relatively rare at football matches. So perhaps AC Ancona is right in thinking that now is the time to push the parameters of morality a bit.
There may be an element of self-preservation in the Vatican's approval of the initiative. It has become almost a truism that football is the new religion and that the great stadiums are to modern cities what gothic cathedrals were in medieval times. Maybe Progetto Soccer is a Trojan horse for the old religion, and this is the start of a reverse take-over.
But even in its stated aims - "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" - Progetto Soccer is very ambitious. I can only wish AC Ancona well in its campaign to clean up a game in which even the ball can often be bent.