Sepp Blatter likes to start the day just before 6am. He skips breakfast but drinks a cup of coffee and does a little dance to stay in shape. “Rhythm, rhythm of life is very important. Also in football, but everywhere,” he says.

塞普布拉特(Sepp Blatter)喜欢在早晨不到6点的时候开始自己新的一天。他不吃早餐，但要喝一杯咖啡，并跳一小会儿舞以保持体形。“节奏，生命的节奏非常重要。足球中也是，无处不是，”他说。

But on May 27, 15 minutes after he woke up, his morning routine was broken by a phone call. Swiss police, acting on extradition requests from the US Department of Justice, launched a raid on Zurich’s Baur-au-Lac hotel and arrested seven senior Fifa officials on suspicion of taking more than $100m of bribes between them.

但5月27日，在醒来15分钟后，他早晨的例行活动被一通电话打乱了。根据美国司法部(Department of Justice)的引渡请求，瑞士警方突袭了苏黎世的巴尔拉克酒店(Baur au Lac)，并逮捕了7名国际足联(Fifa)高官，原因是他们涉嫌收受共计超过1亿美元的贿赂。

The arrests, which were followed by another raid on Fifa’s headquarters on a hill above Zurich, came as hundreds of football officials were gathering in Switzerland for an election to choose a new Fifa president. “I felt like a boxer who was just going into round 12 and said, ‘I’m going to win.’ But then: BONG!” says Blatter, 79, mimicking a knockout blow.

此次逮捕行动实施之际，数百名足球官员正齐聚瑞士，准备投票选出新一届国际足联主席（很快位于苏黎世一座山上的国际足联总部又遭到另一次突袭）。“我感觉自己像一名刚刚进入第12轮的拳击手，嘴里喊着‘我要赢了’。但随后：当！”79岁的布拉特一边说，一边模仿被一拳击倒的动作。

The effect was seismic: although the vote went ahead two days later, and Blatter was re-elected for a fifth term, he stepped down the week after, claiming he needed to “protect Fifa”. It was not enough. Swiss prosecutors put Blatter under investigation and, on October 8, he was suspended from all football activities and evicted from his office at Fifa. While you can physically remove Blatter from Fifa’s headquarters, separating the man from the organisation he has built in his image for the past 40 years — first masterminding football programmes in Africa, then becoming general secretary and finally president — is a tricky proposition.

此次突袭造成了巨大震动：虽然投票在两天后继续进行，布拉特也第五次获得连任，但他在随后一周宣布了辞职，称他需要“保护国际足联”。这还不够。瑞士检方对布拉特展开调查，10月8日，他被暂停从事任何足球活动，并被逐出了自己在国际足联的办公室。虽然可以把布拉特本人逐出国际足联总部，但将他与国际足联分离开来可不容易，过去40年，他已给国际足联打上了他的烙印——他先是在非洲策划足球项目，后来成为秘书长并最终成为主席。

We meet at Sonnenberg restaurant, which in its literature describes itself as the “Fifa Club”, run “under the patronage of Joseph S Blatter” and as a place “where football fans from the worlds of Swiss business, politics and sports meet with their guests for business lunches, exquisite dinners and networking”. I arrive early but Blatter is already waiting, chatting to the restaurant’s head chef, whose white jacket is embroidered with Fifa’s blue logo. We are ushered into a private room with magnificent views over vineyards, then over the city and all the way down to Lake Zurich.

我们在Sonnenberg餐厅见面，这家餐厅在宣传中自称为“国际足联俱乐部”，“在约瑟夫匠布拉特(Joseph S. Blatter)的赞助下”经营，而且是“瑞士商业、政治及体育界的足球迷与客人共进商务午餐、精致晚餐以及进行社交的地方”。我提前来到餐厅，但布拉特已在等候，他与餐厅主厨聊着天，后者的白色夹克上绣着国际足联的蓝色徽标。我们被领进一个包间，从这里可以放眼望见葡萄园，俯瞰整座城市，视野一直延伸到苏黎世湖(Lake Zurich)。

The door shuts behind us and there is an awkward silence. The man who has served for years as a lightning rod for so many shocking accusations of corruption and backroom-dealing suddenly seems frail as he fidgets with his cutlery and rubs his hands together. It turns out that he has a great deal to get off his chest, and several grenades to toss into the fragile process to find his successor, but it is difficult to know where to begin.

关上门后，出现了一段尴尬的沉默。这个多年来一直充当如此多令人震惊的腐败和幕后交易指控避雷针的人物，突然看起来有些脆弱，他摆弄着餐具，然后搓着自己的双手。原来，他有很多话不吐不快，还要向甄选他的继任者的脆弱过程扔下几颗手榴弹，但很难知道从何处开始。

We clink glasses of a Swiss sauvignon blanc and I ask him how he feels now that the end is in sight. In February, he will permanently leave Fifa after a fresh presidential election. Others have told me that it will be an existential crisis for Blatter and hinted darkly that he may not be able to bear it. He freely admits that he is a monomaniac who cannot, and will not, stop thinking about Fifa.

我们碰杯，杯中是瑞士长相思(Sauvignon Blanc)葡萄酒，我问他，结局就在眼前，现在感觉如何。明年2月，在举行新一轮主席选举之后，他将永久地离开国际足联。有人告诉我，这对布拉特而言将是一场事关生死的危机，并隐晦地暗示他或许无法承受。他坦率地承认自己是一名工作狂，他无法、也不会停下对国际足联的思考。

He lives alone in an apartment in Zurich and works from a “very small” office with a desk, a computer, a football and a picture of the Matterhorn on the wall. “I regret I cannot go back to my office [at Fifa HQ], because my office [there] was a little bit more than an office; it was the ‘salon’ we were living in,” he says in accented and slightly topsy-turvy English (he is most comfortable in German or French but also speaks Italian and Spanish).

他独自住在苏黎世的一套公寓，工作在一间“很小的”办公室，里面只有一张桌子、一台电脑、一个足球以及墙上贴着的马特洪峰(Matterhorn)的照片。“很遗憾，我无法回到自己（在国际足联总部）的办公室，因为我（在那里）的办公室不仅仅是一间办公室；那是我们生活在其中的‘沙龙’，”他用带有口音、有点颠三倒四的英语说（他说得最流利的是德语或法语，但也会说意大利语和西班牙语）。

Blatter still wakes early, however, and scans the news for any developments about Fifa. “I answer my personal mail; there is a lot of mail. I am following very carefully what is happening in the office of Fifa and around this office. For the time being, I have not had any possibility to say, ‘Now I go a few days on holiday’,” he says. “I am following everything. I cannot just say I switch off because I am not any longer in the office. Because my office is my memory,” he says, tapping a finger to his forehead.

然而，布拉特依然很早醒来，浏览关于国际足联任何新进展的新闻。“我得回复自己的电子邮件；有很多邮件。我非常仔细地追踪国际足联办公室内部以及周围正在发生什么。就目前而言，我完全不可能说，‘现在我去度几天假’，”他说。“我关注所有的事。我不能说因为不在办公室就不再关注了。因为我的办公室就是我的记忆，”他说，用手指轻敲着自己的脑门。

A waiter enters with a treat from the head chef: plates of salmon, cucumber and caviar. But Blatter is allergic to seafood, he says, shooing the dish away. “They know this. I do not know why they serve it.” He orders cured beef instead, which he eats with his hands, together with some bread.

服务生端进主厨做的菜肴：几盘三文鱼、黄瓜和鱼子酱。但布拉特说，他对海鲜过敏，将盘子推开。“他们知道我对海鲜过敏。我不知道他们为什么还要上这些。”他点了熏牛肉，与面包一起，用手拿着吃起来。

As we settle into our conversation, he quickly pinpoints the moment when Fifa’s troubles — and his downward spiral — began. “It is linked to this now famous date: December 2, 2010,” he says, referring the day he pulled Qatar’s name out of the envelope as host of the 2022 World Cup.

当我们进入话题后，他很快就谈到了国际足联的麻烦——以及他的噩运——开始的那一刻。“这与2010年12月2日有关，这个日子现在已经出名，”他说，指的是他从信封中拿出卡塔尔的名字、宣布其为2022年世界杯主办国的那一天。

“If you see my face when I opened it, I was not the happiest man to say it is Qatar. Definitely not.” The decision caused outrage, even among those who do not follow football. “We were in a situation where nobody understood why the World Cup goes to one of the smallest countries in the world,” he says.

“如果你看到我打开信封时的脸，在说是卡塔尔时，我不是最开心的人。绝对不是。”这个决定引发了愤怒，甚至在那些不关注足球的人中。“我们的处境是，没人理解为什么世界杯主办权会落到世界最小国家之一身上，”他说。

Blatter then drops a bombshell: he did try to rig the vote but for the US, not for Qatar. There had been a “gentleman’s agreement”, he tells me, among Fifa’s leaders that the 2018 and 2022 competitions would go to the “two superpowers” Russia and the US; “It was behind the scenes. It was diplomatically arranged to go there.”

然后，布拉特抛出了一枚“重磅炸弹”：他的确试图操纵那次投票，但是为了美国，而非卡塔尔。他告诉我，国际足联高官之间曾达成一项“君子协定”，即2018年和2022年的世界杯主办权将放在“两个超级大国”——俄罗斯和美国；“这事发生在幕后。是动用外交手腕安排下的。”

Had his electoral engineering succeeded, he would still be in charge, he says. “I would be [on holiday] on an island!” But at the last minute, the deal was off, because of “the governmental interference of Mr Sarkozy”, who Blatter claims encouraged Michel Platini to vote for Qatar. “Just one week before the election I got a telephone call from Platini and he said, ‘I am no longer in your picture because I have been told by the head of state that we should consider... situation of France.’ And he told me that this will affect more than one vote because he had a group of voters.”

如果他对投票的操纵成功的话，他仍将执掌国际足联，他说。“我也许会在某个岛上（度假）！”但在最后一刻，这笔交易流产了，原因是“萨科齐政府的干预”。布拉特称时任法国总统的尼古拉萨科齐(Nicolas Sarkozy)鼓励欧洲足联(UEFA)主席米歇尔渠拉蒂尼(Michel Platini)投票给卡塔尔。“就在投票的一周前，我接到普拉蒂尼的电话，他说：‘我不会照你的办了，因为国家元首告诉我，我们应该考虑……法国的处境。’他告诉我，这将影响不只一张选票，因为他还有几位盟友。”

Blatter will not be drawn on motives. He says he has only once spoken to Sarkozy since the vote and did not raise the issue. He does admit that the vote for the World Cup, carried out by a secret ballot of Fifa’s executive committee, was always open to “collusion”. “In an election, you can never avoid that, that’s impossible... you are only a few in the electoral compound.”

布拉特将不会太过关注其中的缘由。他说，自投票之后，他只有过一次与萨科齐聊天的机会，但没有提及这一问题。他也承认，对世界杯主办权的投票——由国际足联执行委员会以无记名的方式进行——总会容易发生“串通舞弊”。“投票时，当你在投票人中只占少数的时候……你永远无法避免串通，那是不可能的。”

One month after Fifa’s 22-strong executive committee voted 14-8 in a secret ballot in Qatar’s favour, the Arab state announced that it had begun testing French Dassault Rafale fighter jets against rival aircraft for a fleet upgrade. In April 2015, Qatar bought 24 of the jets for $7bn, with an option to buy 12 more.

在国际足联执委会22名执委进行的无记名投票中，卡塔尔以14票对8票获胜，一个月后，这个阿拉伯国家宣布已开始对法国达索(Dassault)生产的阵风(Rafale)战斗机与竞争机型进行对比测试，以升级本国的战斗机群。2015年4月，卡塔尔斥资70亿美元购买了24架阵风战斗机，未来或再购买12架。

The waiter arrives with our “Fifa salad”, a mix of lamb’s lettuce, croutons, lardons and diced egg. “This is Mama Blatter’s salad,” Blatter says cheerily. “We always made it with whatever greens were in season, and you put some croutons and a little bit of bacon.”

服务生为我们送来了“国际足联沙拉”(Fifa salad)，其中混合了野苣、烤碎面包块、法式腌肉条和鸡蛋丁。“这是‘妈妈布拉特’(Mama Blatter)的沙拉，”布拉特兴高采烈地说。“我们总是使用任何应季的绿色蔬菜制作，再加入一些烤碎面包块和一点点熏肉。”

Blatter is from the small Alpine town of Visp (population: 7,500), about two hours from Zurich by train. A Roman Catholic, he plans to return there this weekend for All Souls’ Day. His father worked in a chemical plant and his only daughter, Corinne, still lives there, teaching English. He has a 14-year-old granddaughter called Selena. Blatter admits that his troubles have hit her hard. “I think she was suffering more than me,” he says, indicating that he lets criticism wash over him while she takes it personally.

布拉特来自阿尔卑斯山下的小城菲斯普（Visp，约有7500名居民），乘火车到苏黎世约需两小时。作为一名罗马天主教徒，他计划回那里过万灵节(All Souls’ Day)。他的父亲曾在一家化工厂工作，他唯一的女儿科琳娜(Corinne)仍然生活在那里，从事英语教学。他有一个14岁的外孙女，叫赛琳娜(Selena)。布拉特承认，自己的麻烦对她造成了严重打击。“我觉得她比我承受的痛苦要多，”他说，他的意思是，自己对批评不屑一顾，而她却放在心上。

When I ask Blatter what he thinks of Platini, he sits back in his chair, pauses, and then gives a diplomatic, if strained, response. “Platini was an exceptionally good player. He is a good guy. He could be a good successor, yes. It was foreseen, once, that he shall follow [me].”

当我问布拉特对普拉蒂尼的看法时，他向后靠在椅子上，停顿了一下，然后给出了一种外交辞令式（甚至是勉强）的回应。“普拉蒂尼是一名非常出色的球员。他是一个好人。他可能成为一名优秀的继任者，是的。曾经，有人预测他会接替（我）。”

Platini is still in the race for the Fifa presidency, but his campaign was effectively derailed following his suspension, at the same time as Blatter, after a SFr2m payment from Fifa to his bank account in 2011 came to light. “You do not need to have a contract written down [...] according to Swiss law,” Blatter says of the Platini payment, adding that even witnesses are not necessary. “Handshake contracts are valid. The Anglo-Saxon system is not the same as the system here in central Europe.”

普拉蒂尼仍在竞争国际足联主席职位，但在国际足联2011年向普拉蒂尼的银行账户支付200万瑞士法郎的款项被曝光后，其竞选活动随着他被停职（与布拉特同时）实际上已经中断。“根据瑞士法律……你不需要书面合同，”布拉特在谈到普拉蒂尼收到的这笔款项时说，并补充说，甚至不需要见证。“握手合约是有效的。盎格鲁-撒克逊法系与我们中欧这边的不一样。”

He is correct — Swiss law does provide for oral contracts — but I point out that this is not the way that large companies behave. “But we are a club,” he responds. When I point out that the payment was not accounted for, he shuts down the conversation.

他是正确的，瑞士法律确实承认口头合约，但我指出这不是大企业的行事之道。布拉特答道：“但我们是一个俱乐部。”当我指出这笔钱缺乏解释时，他结束了这个话题。

While Blatter pays lip-service to the idea of reform at Fifa, saying there “must be more than a few changes”, he remains brass-necked about the culture of handshakes, favours and secret deals that he encouraged. “The system is not wrong,” he says, adding that if he had been allowed to remain as president, “then we would be in the right way”. His successor, he believes, should not try to change what he has created.

布拉特一面口头上许诺要对国际足联进行改革，称国际足联“必须作出许多改变”，一面厚颜无耻地继续支持赠送礼金、给予好处、秘密交易等文化。布拉特说：“国际足联体制本身没有错。”他还说如果自己能获准继续担任主席，“那我们就会走上正确的道路。”他认为他的继任者不应试图去改变他创造的一切。

I ask him about the money, the allegations of bribery and corruption that have dogged him for years. Did he, or people working on his behalf, ever hand out cash to win the support of Fifa’s members?

我问他有关钱的事，多年来，贿赂和腐败的指控一直纠缠着他。到底他本人，或者他的代理人，有没有曾经用金钱去换取国际足联成员的支持？

He invokes his parents as he denies it all. “We have a principle in our family. The basic principle is to only take money if you earn it. Secondly, do not give money to anybody to obtain the advantage. And the third one is if you owe money, pay your debts. These are the principles I have followed since [I was] 12 years old,” he says. “That is why I am claiming that my conscience, as far as money is concerned, I am totally clear and clean.”

他用家训否认了所有指控：“我们家是有家规的。最基本的一条是，只拿自己赚的钱。第二条，不要为了得到好处给别人钱。第三条，欠账一定要还钱。我从12岁起就遵循这些家规。所以我才敢说，在有关钱的问题上，我绝对问心无愧。”

Is he a rich man? No, he says, he only earns what Fifa pays him — a sum that he refuses to disclose because Fifa releases its leadership payments only in aggregate; last year it paid $39.7m to its “key management personnel”.

他是富翁吗？布拉特予以否认，说自己只拿国际足联的工资，但无法透露具体数字，因为国际足联只公布所有官员的总薪资。去年该组织向“重要管理人员”共发放薪资3970万美元。

“What do I do with my money? My daughter has an apartment. I have an apartment, one here and one there. That is all. I am not spending money just to show I have money. If you look at the richest Swiss people, I cannot approach the richest 3,000, because they are up to $25m.”

“我的钱都花到哪儿了？我女儿有套公寓，我自己有套公寓。我一套房，她一套房，就这些。我不会为了炫富花钱。看看瑞士富豪排行榜，我都排不进前3000名，因为要排进去身家至少得有2500万美元。”

The waiter returns with our main courses. For me, a surprisingly large veal chop; for Blatter, a plate of boiled beef and julienned vegetables. He picks at it slowly. “I have to tell you that I don’t eat so much because you cannot eat more than you burn,” he says.

服务生送来了我们的主菜。我的主菜是一块大到惊人的牛排，布拉特的主菜是一盘清炖牛肉配什锦蔬菜丝。他一点点儿慢慢吃着：“我得告诉你我吃得其实不多，因为你吃进去的热量不能超出你消耗的。”

After a pause, he sketches out what he thinks were his two main achievements at Fifa: the Goal project, which sends millions of dollars to the world’s poorest countries and claims to have built more than 700 football facilities since 1998, and the decision to rotate the World Cup around the continents and, especially, to bring it to Africa in 2010.

停顿了片刻后，布拉特概述了他自己心目中他在国际足联的两项主要成就：一个是Goal计划，该项目为世界上最贫困国家送去了大量资金，并宣称自1998年以来，已出资建成了700多个足球设施；另一个成就是在他的决定下，由各大洲轮流主办世界杯，尤其是2010年他将这一赛事带到了非洲大陆。

He bats away my suggestion that the development money was another way of distributing favours and was a source of money for corrupt officials: “There is a percentage, perhaps 2 per cent or 3 per cent, which have not worked.”

当我提出这些发展项目的资金是分配利益的另一途径，也是官员贪腐的一大资金来源时，布拉特没有作出正面回应：“一定比例的项目——也许2%或3%——没有成功。”

His success in maintaining an iron grip on Fifa hangs partly on the support of African countries, which he has courted assiduously. The shadow of colonialism still lingers, and African football officials often feel that Europeans treat them as second-class. Blatter, by contrast, is unwavering in his vocal support for African football and worked tirelessly to bring the World Cup to South Africa. He has also delivered commercial success: in the four years leading up to the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, Fifa had total revenues of $5.72bn.

布拉特能成功维持对国际足联的铁腕掌控，在一部分上有赖于非洲各国的支持，他一直竭力拉拢这些国家。殖民主义的阴影仍在非洲大陆上时时浮现，非洲足球官员常常觉得欧洲人视他们为二等公民。与之相比，布拉特坚定地对非洲足球予以声援，并且付出了不懈努力，把世界杯带到了南非。他在商业上也取得了成功，2014年巴西世界杯之前的4年时间里，国际足联的总收入达到57.2亿美元。

In his view, he has created a virtuous circle: Fifa helps kids in developing countries play football by building them pitches and then benefits when they get home and watch big matches on TV. This work, he insists, cannot be undone: “My reputation is spoiled, because I was bitterly attacked, as responsible for everything. But it will not damage my legacy.” With the benefit of hindsight, he wonders whether it might have been better for him to stand down after the high of the 2014 World Cup in Brazil.

在布拉特看来，他创造了一个良性循环，通过为发展中国家建设球场，国际足联帮助这些国家的孩子参与到足球运动中，让这些孩子成为球迷，当他们在家观看大型比赛转播时，国际足联又能从中受益。布拉特坚称这项工作不能中断：“我的名声已经毁了，因为我受到猛烈抨击，一切事都要我负责。但这不会破坏我留下来的事业。”他很想知道，如果当初有先见之明，在自己的事业顶峰期——2014年巴西世界杯——选择急流勇退，会否是个更好的选择。

When I ask about the ISL case, in which it was revealed in 2008 that a sports agency founded by Horst Dassler of Adidas had paid SFr138m in bribes to senior Fifa officials, Blatter refuses to discuss it. He was not found guilty of any wrongdoing and, he says, the case is now closed and jokes about double indemnity: “In American law it is said you cannot be condemned twice!”

当我问到ISL事件时，布拉特拒绝对此进行讨论。此事于2008年曝光，ISL是一家体育营销公司，由阿迪达斯(Adidas)的霍斯特戴斯勒(Horst Dassler)创建，这家公司向国际足联高级官员的贿赂金额高达1.38亿瑞士法郎。布拉特表示自己没有被认定有任何违法行为，而且这件事现在已经了结，他还拿双倍赔偿开起玩笑：“按美国法律来说，一个人不能被定两次罪！”

I bring up the case in the US in 2006 where Fifa paid a $90m settlement to MasterCard for reneging on a contract in order to sign a more lucrative sponsorship deal with Visa. “We were not very very clever,” admits Blatter. “It was wrong. But sometimes, because you were working hard you make mistakes. You cannot just hang somebody.”

我又提到2006年在美国的那件案子，当时国际足联为了与Visa签下一份更丰厚的赞助合约，违背了与万事达(MasterCard)的合同，因而向万事达支付了9000万美元和解金。布拉特承认：“我们并不是非常、非常的明智。这件事是个错误。但有时候，人们会因为工作努力而犯错误。你不能因此判他们死刑。”

As we pass over the thorny questions about his wealth, about Fifa’s corruption and secrecy, Blatter is calm. He believes he is a man more sinned against than sinning, and he repeats that he has little control over the behaviour of Fifa’s executive committee, whose members were not appointed by him, but by the six continental football federations.

由于我们并未就他的财富问题，以及国际足联的贪腐和秘密等棘手问题进行深入讨论，布拉特一直保持了冷静。他认为自己受罚过重，并反复强调自己基本无法控制国际足联执行委员会的行为，其成员并非由他任命，而是由六大洲足球联盟决定的。

“Regrets? I do not regret,” he says. “The only regret I have is that in my life in football I am a very generous man in my thoughts and I think people are good and then I have realised that most of the time I was, let’s say, trapped by people. You trust someone 100 per cent and then you see that all this trust was just to get some advantage. I have done it not only once, I have done it more than once. I have to bear that and I bear it.”

布拉特说：“遗憾吗？我没什么遗憾。我唯一的遗憾是在我的足球事业生涯里，我自认是个非常慷慨的人，我相信人心向善，结果我发现原来多数时间里我一直……怎么说呢，一直在别人的圈套里。你百分百的去信任一个人，结果发现别人博取你的信任只是为了得到一些好处。这种事我经历了不止一次。我只得承受，我也承受下来了。”

Meanwhile, he lambasts Switzerland for not protecting him. “I am a Swiss citizen. I was even a soldier! I was the commander of a regiment of 3,500 people. I served my country!” he protests, referring to his service in the 1960s as colonel in command in the army’s supply unit during the cold war.

同时，布拉特严厉抨击瑞士不对自己提供保护。他抗议道：“我是一名瑞士公民。我还当过兵！我曾担任过3500名士兵的指挥官。我为祖国服过役！”布拉特指的是上世纪60年代他曾在军队服役，当时适逢冷战，他曾作为上校指挥过军队的补给部门。

These days, he has few allies left. He says he counted on one hand the number of friends he could call on for help when deciding whether to step down after years at the top of football. He admits his reputation has been destroyed. But he cannot stop. He remains proud of his life’s work. “Could somebody else have done it? If he was fool enough to only live for football, then he could have. But it is difficult to find people that have been in the game with not only their body, not only their mind, or with their heart, but with their soul. And I was therein. And if you ask me what I am doing later, I am still therein.”

这些天来，布拉特的盟友所剩无几。他说当他考虑要不要放弃担任了多年的足坛最高职位时，他可以打电话寻求帮助的朋友一只手就可以数过来。他承认他的名声已经毁了。但他不能停下来。他仍为自己此生的事业感到自豪。“别人能取得这样的成绩吗？一个人只有傻到只为足球而活，才可能做到这一切。但很难找到一个人，不仅为足球运动奉献了他们的身体、他们的思想、他们的心灵，还奉献了他们的灵魂。而我就是这样的人。如果你问我以后会做什么，我还会继续这样奉献。”

We do not order any dessert, simply a cup of espresso and some petits-fours in the shape of small footballs. Blatter is looking forward to the evening, when his girlfriend, Linda Barras, a 51-year-old with two children, is flying in to see him. She lives in Geneva, but Blatter is happy with the situation.

我们没点甜点，只要了一杯浓咖啡，和一些足球形状的法式小甜点。布拉特对晚上充满期待，他的女朋友琳达巴拉斯(Linda Barras)当晚要飞过来看他。她今年51岁，有两个孩子，居住在日内瓦，但布拉特对现状很满意。

“The distances are not detrimental to a good understanding,” he says. “Perhaps it is even better for the guy who has devoted all his life to football. When you are 100 per cent in your job and your job is really something you believe in, then obviously even by being a generous man, at a certain time the person living with you cannot be happy,” he says.

布拉特说：“距离不会影响良好的相互理解。而且对于一个为足球献出了一生的男人而言，这样也许反而更好。如果你对工作百分百的投入，而且你真正信仰自己的工作，那么即使你是一个慷慨的男人，有时候跟你一起生活也不是件开心的事。”

Then he stands up, suddenly small and frail again, signs a football for the restaurant’s manager and disappears into a black Mercedes.

说完布拉特站起身，瞬间又变回那个脆弱的矮个子男人，在为餐厅经理在一个足球上签过名后，消失在一辆黑色奔驰车里。