Pope admits soccer failing

POPE Francis has told children at an Italian sports centre he didn’t play soccer very well as a youth and was stuck with the nickname “stiff leg”.

An 11-year-old boy asked the Pontiff during a parish visit in the Rome suburb of Acilia if he had played soccer as a child.

Pope Francis, a keen soccer fan in his native Argentina, said as he wasn’t “bravo” he usually ended up playing goalie.

He said: “When I was your age I played soccer but I wasn’t ‘bravo’ at playing soccer, and where I come from they call you ‘pata dura’, ‘stiff leg’.

“I was a ‘pata dura’ and that’s why I usually was the goalie.”