I was living in Paris in 1998 and had tickets for the World Cup Final but instead had to rush off to cover upheaval in Nigeria and ended up in a Lagos hotel watching France beat Brazil 3-0. The commentators were Nigerian, of course. After a couple of first-half French goals against a listless Brazilian side, they pretty much gave up describing the match. Instead they focused on how much money they thought had changed hands to secure France’s triumph. I laughed as the numbers spiraled upward.
1998年时我住在巴黎，有世界杯决赛的门票，但是由于不得不赶去尼日利亚报道那里的动荡局势，最后在拉各斯的一家酒店观看了法国队以3-0击败巴西的那场决赛。解说员当然是尼日利亚人。当法国队在上半场进了两个球，而巴西毫无建树时，解说员就几乎就不再评述比赛了，而是主要谈起了他们觉得法国队为了确保获胜，花了多少钱来做交易。当金额数字不断攀升时，我笑了起来。

The speculation — unfounded in this instance — seemed to me more a reflection of the Nigeria of Sani Abacha, the ruthless and massively corrupt leader who had just died, than of the state of global soccer. In Nigeria back then, nothing moved without payment of a bribe. Now, however, I am not so sure. Those commentators were onto something larger than the match itself. Sepp Blatter, once described by The Guardian as “the most successful non-homicidal dictator of the past century,” had been elected the month before as president of FIFA, soccer’s governing body, in a ballot marked by allegations of cash handouts of $50,000 to African delegates in a Paris hotel. It was the start of Blatter’s 17-year (and counting) reign of shame over the world’s most popular game. He is a man without conscience.
在我看来，这完全是针对那场比赛的无端猜测，它更多地反映了萨尼·阿巴查(Sani Abacha)统治下的尼日利亚的状况，与国际足球当时的情况无关。阿巴查是个冷酷无情、极度腐败的领导者，当时刚刚去世不久。在那时的尼日利亚，不行贿就什么也做不了。不过，现在我不是那么肯定了。这些解说员们谈到了比球赛本身更大的事情。在那场比赛的一个月前，赛普‧布拉特(Sepp Blatter)被选举为足球管理机构国际足联(FIFA)的主席，关于那场选举的投票，据称巴黎一家酒店的非洲国家代表获得了5万美元的现金。布拉特曾被《卫报》(The Guardian)形容为“过去一个世纪里最成功的不杀人独裁者”，而那就是布拉特对世界上最受欢迎的运动长达17年（还在延长中）的耻辱统治的开端。他是一个没有良知的人。
Another unrelated soccer memory stirred at the news of the arrest in Zurich of several top FIFA officials on bribery, fraud and money laundering charges brought by the United States Justice Department. It was of standing 30 years ago at the Heysel Stadium in Brussels with my friends Patrick Wintour of The Guardian and Ed Vulliamy of The Observer. We watched as Liverpool fans charged Juventus fans gathered in the Z-block of the ground. There was a sickening inevitability about what happened as the Juventus supporters were crushed against terrace barriers that collapsed and then a concrete wall.
听到几名国际足联官员因为美国司法部提出的贿赂、欺诈和洗钱等罪名指控而在苏黎世遭到逮捕时，我的脑海中浮现出一个与之无关的足球记忆。那是30年前，我在布鲁塞尔的海瑟尔体育场(Heysel Stadium)，与《卫报》的帕特里克·温图尔(Patrick Wintour)和《观察家》(The Observer)的埃德·福里米(Ed Vulliamy)一起看球。我和两位朋友目睹了利物浦球迷冲向体育场Z区的尤文图斯球迷的过程。当尤文图斯球迷被挤到露台的栏杆上时，先是栏杆断裂，随后混凝土墙倒塌，令人悲痛的惨剧不可避免地到来了。
Later Wintour and Vulliamy filed a report: “We heard a muted but ghastly thud, like quarry dynamited at a distance. It was the sound of tons of concrete and scores of bodies plunging over the edge of the terracing.” You knew. People were dying. There were, in the end, 39 dead, most of them Juventus fans. The match went ahead, a ghastly farce.
后来温图尔和福里米发表了报道：“我们听到了不响亮但是很可怕的一声闷响，像采石场在远处爆破。成吨的混凝土和几十具躯体从看台上跌落。”你知道的。生命就此逝去。总共有39人遇难，其中大多数是尤文图斯球迷。而比赛继续进行，变成了一出可怕的闹剧。
It is not true that everything has gotten worse in global soccer under Blatter. Safety has improved and, yes, the World Cup has been held in Africa. But just about everything has. To conclude that Blatter should quit rather than embark on a fifth term as FIFA president (assuming his seemingly inevitable election to a fifth term on Friday) feels so blindingly obvious that it’s not worth saying. But then the FIFA president is so thick-skinned it’s actually worth saying twice: Mr. Blatter, your time is up.
要说布拉特担任主席期间，全球足球运动的每个方面都出现恶化，那不是事实。足球运动的安全性有所提升，是的，世界杯也开到了非洲。但除此之外的几乎一切都恶化了。布拉特应该走人，放弃他第五个国际足联主席任期（看似本周五他很有可能第五次当选）的理由感觉明显之至，几乎不用再宣诸于口。但这位国际足联主席如此厚颜，说两遍也不为过：布拉特先生，你的时间到了。
Why? Because the corruption charges against current and former FIFA vice presidents and others reflect an organization rotten to its core, operating in the absence of any meaningful oversight, without term limits for a president whose salary is of course unknown (but estimated by Bloomberg to be “in the low double-digit” millions), overseeing $5.72 billion in partially unaccounted revenue for the four years to December 2014, governing a sport in which matches and World Cup venues and in fact just about everything appears to have been up for sale, burying a report it commissioned by a former United States attorney into the bidding process for the next two World Cups, and generally operating in a culture of cavalier disdain personified by Blatter, whose big cash awards to soccer federations in poorer countries have turned the delegates from many of FIFA’s 209 member associations into his fawning acolytes.
为什么呢？因为现任和前任国际足联副主席和其他官员遭到腐败指控，表明这个组织已经烂到骨子里了，它的运转完全缺乏真正的监督。其主席的薪水当然是未知的（但彭博社估计是“小几千万”），任期也没有限制。该组织掌管着57.2亿美元资金，在截止2014年12月的四年中部分收入下落不明。在它管理的这项运动中，比赛、世界杯场地，以及基本上所有一切似乎都已经在挂牌出售，它还把委托一位前美国联邦检察官做出的针对下两届世界杯申办过程的调查报告抛到一边。而且它的文化通常散发着不屑一顾的、傲慢的气息，布拉特本人就是这种文化的化身，他向较贫穷国家的足联发放巨额现金，把国际足联209个成员国的不少代表变成了向他摇尾乞怜的追随者。
Among those charged is Jeffrey Webb, the successor to Jack Warner as the head of the North and Central American and Caribbean regional confederation within FIFA. Warner was also charged. When Warner’s corruption became so outlandish that he was forced to step down a few years ago, Blatter’s FIFA maintained a presumption of innocence. Enough said.
在遭到指控的人中，杰弗里·韦伯(Jeffrey Webb)作为杰克·华纳(Jack Warner)的继任者，是国际足联北美、中美洲和加勒比地区的负责人，华纳本次也遭到指控。几年前，华纳的腐败行为变得太过出格，以至于被迫下台，而布拉特治下的国际足联对他做了无罪推定。无需再多说了。
Bribery occurred “over and over, year after year, tournament after tournament,” said Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch, who has supervised the investigation from the days when she was the United States attorney for the Eastern District of New York. That sounds about right. The office of the attorney general of Switzerland has opened a separate criminal investigation into the selection of Russia to host the 2018 World Cup and Qatar the 2022 World Cup.
司法部长洛蕾塔‧E‧林奇(Loretta E. Lynch)还在纽约东区当联邦检察官时，就开始主持这起调查，她说“一次又一次，一年又一年，每项赛事”都有行贿受贿行为。这话听起来基本准确。对于国际足联选择俄罗斯主办2018年世界杯，卡塔尔主办2022年世界杯，瑞士司法部长已经开启了独立的刑事调查。
Just because Russia and Qatar are gas-rich (and back in 1998 a Qatari businessman provided Blatter with a private jet for his first FIFA election campaign) does not mean the process was corrupt. Of course it does not. But that Swiss criminal investigation is thoroughly warranted — and the first requisite for making it thorough, transparent and credible is Blatter’s immediate departure.
并不是说俄罗斯和卡塔尔仅仅由于天然气储量丰富（以及在1998年，一名卡塔尔商人为布拉特提供私人飞机，帮助他首次竞选国际足联主席），它们的申办过程就一定腐败。当然不是。然而，瑞士开展刑事调查是极有必要的，而要保证这个调查彻底、透明、可信，首要条件就是布拉特立即走人。