布拉特對國際足聯的"恥辱統治"必須終結

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年時我住在巴黎，有世界盃決賽的門票，但是由於不得不趕去尼日利亞報道那裏的動盪局勢，最後在拉各斯的一家酒店觀看了法國隊以3-0擊敗巴西的那場決賽。解說員當然是尼日利亞人。當法國隊在上半場進了兩個球，而巴西毫無建樹時，解說員就幾乎就不再評述比賽了，而是主要談起了他們覺得法國隊爲了確保獲勝，花了多少錢來做交易。當金額數字不斷攀升時，我笑了起來。

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.

在我看來，這完全是針對那場比賽的無端猜測，它更多地反映了薩尼·阿巴查(Sani Abacha)統治下的尼日利亞的狀況，與國際足球當時的情況無關。阿巴查是個冷酷無情、極度腐敗的領導者，當時剛剛去世不久。在那時的尼日利亞，不行賄就什麼也做不了。不過，現在我不是那麼肯定了。這些解說員們談到了比球賽本身更大的事情。在那場比賽的一個月前，賽普‧布拉特(Sepp Blatter)被選舉爲足球管理機構國際足聯(FIFA)的主席，關於那場選舉的投票，據稱巴黎一家酒店的非洲國家代表獲得了5萬美元的現金。布拉特曾被《衛報》(The Guardian)形容爲“過去一個世紀裏最成功的不殺人獨裁者”，而那就是布拉特對世界上最受歡迎的運動長達17年（還在延長中）的恥辱統治的開端。他是一個沒有良知的人。

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.

聽到幾名國際足聯官員因爲美國司法部提出的賄賂、欺詐和洗錢等罪名指控而在蘇黎世遭到逮捕時，我的腦海中浮現出一個與之無關的足球記憶。那是30年前，我在布魯塞爾的海瑟爾體育場(Heysel Stadium)，與《衛報》的帕特里克·溫圖爾(Patrick Wintour)和《觀察家》(The Observer)的埃德·福裏米(Ed Vulliamy)一起看球。我和兩位朋友目睹了利物浦球迷衝向體育場Z區的尤文圖斯球迷的過程。當尤文圖斯球迷被擠到露臺的欄杆上時，先是欄杆斷裂，隨後混凝土牆倒塌，令人悲痛的慘劇不可避免地到來了。

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.

後來溫圖爾和福裏米發表了報道：“我們聽到了不響亮但是很可怕的一聲悶響，像採石場在遠處爆破。成噸的混凝土和幾十具軀體從看臺上跌落。”你知道的。生命就此逝去。總共有39人遇難，其中大多數是尤文圖斯球迷。而比賽繼續進行，變成了一出可怕的鬧劇。

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.

要說布拉特擔任主席期間，全球足球運動的每個方面都出現惡化，那不是事實。足球運動的安全性有所提升，是的，世界盃也開到了非洲。但除此之外的幾乎一切都惡化了。布拉特應該走人，放棄他第五個國際足聯主席任期（看似本週五他很有可能第五次當選）的理由感覺明顯之至，幾乎不用再宣諸於口。但這位國際足聯主席如此厚顏，說兩遍也不爲過：布拉特先生，你的時間到了。

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.

爲什麼呢？因爲現任和前任國際足聯副主席和其他官員遭到腐敗指控，表明這個組織已經爛到骨子裏了，它的運轉完全缺乏真正的監督。其主席的薪水當然是未知的（但彭博社估計是“小几千萬”），任期也沒有限制。該組織掌管着57.2億美元資金，在截止2014年12月的四年中部分收入下落不明。在它管理的這項運動中，比賽、世界盃場地，以及基本上所有一切似乎都已經在掛牌出售，它還把委託一位前美國聯邦檢察官做出的針對下兩屆世界盃申辦過程的調查報告拋到一邊。而且它的文化通常散發着不屑一顧的、傲慢的氣息，布拉特本人就是這種文化的化身，他向較貧窮國家的足聯發放鉅額現金，把國際足聯209個成員國的不少代表變成了向他搖尾乞憐的追隨者。

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，傑弗裏·韋伯(Jeffrey Webb)作爲傑克·華納(Jack Warner)的繼任者，是國際足聯北美、中美洲和加勒比地區的負責人，華納本次也遭到指控。幾年前，華納的腐敗行爲變得太過出格，以至於被迫下臺，而布拉特治下的國際足聯對他做了無罪推定。無需再多說了。

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.

司法部長洛蕾塔‧E‧林奇(Loretta E. Lynch)還在紐約東區當聯邦檢察官時，就開始主持這起調查，她說“一次又一次，一年又一年，每項賽事”都有行賄受賄行爲。這話聽起來基本準確。對於國際足聯選擇俄羅斯主辦2018年世界盃，卡塔爾主辦2022年世界盃，瑞士司法部長已經開啓了獨立的刑事調查。

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.

並不是說俄羅斯和卡塔爾僅僅由於天然氣儲量豐富（以及在1998年，一名卡塔爾商人爲布拉特提供私人飛機，幫助他首次競選國際足聯主席），它們的申辦過程就一定腐敗。當然不是。然而，瑞士開展刑事調查是極有必要的，而要保證這個調查徹底、透明、可信，首要條件就是布拉特立即走人。