THESE days world leaders are generally expected to push back the boundaries a bit and set "new goals" for their followers.

I wonder if Pope Benedict XVI had that sort of thing in mind when he told representatives of Italian football that the sport had a crucial role in teaching young people a whole raft of life lessons - on honesty, solidarity and fraternity, that sort of thing.

My initial reaction to hearing this was: Gosh, can he really mean it? I mean, you have to admire the Pontiff for positive thinking - but football?

After all, here in the country which bequeathed the "Beautiful Game" to the world, the image of our national sport is not exactly as attractive as it might be. The players themselves are, at the higher levels, in the unusual position of being among the most revered and most reviled figures in public life.

Hardly a week goes by without at least one of them hitting the headlines, and it's not generally for their tireless charity work.

The infamous Manchester United Christmas party is just one recent example of the sort of publicity that must have the game's officials tearing what's left of their hair out.

That said, the players are still role models for youth - of a sort. I suspect many active young men would love to make oodles of cash by kicking seven bells out of their contemporaries, and to have endless opportunities for promiscuous sex. Somehow, I don't think that's quite what the Pope had in mind, though.

It's not just the players who have an image problem. Whether you're talking about bungs and dodgy deals, rocketing ticket prices or even the fact that the national team seems incapable of winning tournaments, football has enjoyed more than its fair share of negative publicity.

The Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu, who has been known to attend matches, could perhaps update the Pope on the UK situation later this month, when the two are due to meet.

But it's not only a British disease. Beyond the Vatican's walls, Italian football has been plagued by hooliganism, and allegations of match-fixing and corruption.

Still, previous Popes have launched crusades and the occasional Counter-Reformation, and Pope Benedict's predecessor is credited with helping to bring down Eastern European communism, so there is a precedent for taking on major undertakings.

And, to be fair to football, it's not alone in struggling to maintain its founding principles and impeccable image.

Cricketers were getting up to all sorts of high jinks long before the notorious Flintoff pedalo incident. Betting on results was apparently rife in the early Victorian era, but now it's an international industry, and concern about its malign influence on cricket was highlighted during the investigation into Bob Woolmer's death.

There are worries too about matches being "thrown" in tennis; it's not a great start to an Olympic year when a past champion gets a jail sentence for lying about using drugs; and Ampleforth old boy Lawrence Dallaglio reminded us in his recent autobiography that when a national newspaper claimed the England captain was involved with drugs, it was actually respectable old rugby union it was referring to.

Dallaglio insists he was stitched-up, but the episode is an unhappy reminder of the microscope top sportsmen and women are put under these days.

Happily, horse racing is, of course, entirely free from any suspicion of corruption or malpractice.

It seems to me the problem is that sport lost its clean-cut image when big money became involved - a result of evolving into mass entertainment. To find an historical precedent, you probably have to go back to Classical times.

The Greeks invented the Olympics, but the Romans went for mass appeal with gladiators cutting each other to bits in the Colosseum - not very far from where Pope Benedict made his pronouncement. Things have moved on a little, I suppose. Footballers are unlikely to be killed, especially since Roy Keane retired, the fatal thumbs-down now generally being reserved for managers.

We must wish the Pope all the best in his efforts to reintroduce the Corinthian spirit. But I fear it's going to take quite a few Papal blessings to make football the beacon to youth that he, and many others, would like it to be.