【纽约时报 20140609】我们需要国际足联吗？

满仓

【中文标题】我们需要国际足联吗？
【原文标题】Does Soccer Need FIFA?
【登载媒体】纽约时报
【原文作者】Daniel A. Medina、Matt Negrin、Mauricio Savarese
【原文链接】[url=http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2014/06/09/does-soccer-need-fifa]http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2014/06/09/does-soccer-need-fifa[/url]



活动人士在巴西利亚抗议举办世界杯。

对操纵比赛和选择卡塔尔作为2022年世界杯举办国的质疑，仅仅是让这个足球管理机构陷入困境的诸多丑闻中的一部分。现在，有些人呼吁取消国际足联，或者进行重大改革来解决这个具有重大政治和经济影响力的组织的失查行为。

世界上最受欢迎的运动项目怎样才能避免腐败？


各国应当推进改革


Daniel A. Medina是Paste杂志的足球评论员。他有推特账号。

国际足联——至少其目前的组织方式——应当被废除。原因有很多，但主要的一点是这个组织完全不透明，这会滋生，甚至有人说是鼓励高层的腐败行为。国际足联秘密的不记名投票制度使其完全没有改革的动力，他们选择主办国的过程也非常可疑。《星期日泰晤士报》调查并曝光了2022年卡塔尔申办世界杯过程中的腐败行为，这仅仅是冰山的一角。

塞普•布拉特与于1998年当选国际足联主席，他的任期或许是这家具有110年历史的组织最受丑闻困扰的时期。他曾经公开表示足球是全世界“共享的体育文化”，但暗地里通过跨国公司利润丰厚的赞助协议把世界杯商业化，不但让国际足联富得流油，还导致主办国负债累累。

让我们用巴西举例。当国际足联在2007年授予这个国家世界杯主办国时，它承诺巴西人民，主办这项赛事的资金主要来源于私营机构，而不是公共资金。今天，巴西自己发布的财务数据显示，国家已经投入了40亿美元修建体育场，还有70亿美元修建其它基础设施。天文数字激怒了巴西民众，他们说这些钱应当用来办教育，改善国内一塌糊涂的医疗体制等等。他们走上街头，要求得到国际足联和政府的回应。布拉特敦促抗议者“不要利用足球来达到自己的目的”。

解散国际足联唯一可行的方法是成员国给予抵制。他们必须主动要求领导层的变化，要求一个新的体制，确保透明投票，改革不公平的资金结构，扭转向富国倾斜的天平。如果国际足联不进行彻底的改革，足球这项运动将遭遇危机，或许成员国是唯一改变的力量。


向国际足联出示红牌


Matt Negrin在写一本有关全世界和世界杯球迷的书。他的网站是awayandhome.com。

一位住在圣保罗的朋友对我说，如果你真的爱足球，那么你只能爱足球。意思是说，你不能把这项美丽的运动，与国际足联和巴西政府那样肆无忌惮腐败的组织中横行霸道的恶棍们混为一谈。

问题是你无法把他们分割开来。过去两个月里，我走遍世界寻找各地最优秀的球迷。我恐怕无法评判哪个球迷更加热衷，但可以肯定的一件事是：绝对不是国际足联。

当最近的受贿丑闻浮出水面，关注国际足球的人士似乎习以为常。因为这已经不是第一次了，很可能也不是最后一次，国际足联到底可以被出示多少张黄牌？

或许真正的问题是：我们为什么需要国际足联？

看看那些坐着私人飞机、装模作样投票、挣着大笔钞票、以组织足球比赛为生的人们，一个初中生用EXCEL表格就可以搞定一切，而且他们丝毫不用关注一个靠贿赂赢得世界杯举办权的中东国家发生数百人死亡的惨案。

我不明白，为什么两个国家踢一场足球需要国际足联的介入？每个国家都有足够的闲人轻而易举地办成这件事。“嗨，哥斯达黎加吗？我是荷兰。周二晚上踢场球怎么样？”

对了，还有。世界杯小组抽签的过程，我们不要4个小时的旋转小球和杂耍表演又怎么样？我敢打赌一个麻省理工学院的天才可以设计出一个程序，把32支队伍分到4个小组中。

上个周末，巴西国家对看到了他们即将乘坐的国际足联客车，车上印着“Brazil”，是“z”，而不是巴西人自己的拼写“Brasil”。或许让这个国际足球机构放手不管这件事并不难，但可惜字母并不是国际足联唯一搞错的事情。


解决基层的腐败问题


Mauricio Savarese是一名巴西记者，与他人合著《从A到济科：巴西足球的字母排序》。他的博客名称是“这里的巴西运动”。

国际足联的领导人在管理这个机构，并且让足球成为比联合国更全球化的组织：国际足联的成员国有209个，联合国只有193个成员国。这等同于媒体的关注、巨额的利润和大量国家一窝蜂地争取能带来大量收入的世界杯的举办权。国际足联毕竟能获取巨额收入，说明这个秘密的组织还是有可取之处的。

国际足联的腐败问题源于其不断扩张的影响力。当选国际足联主席仅凭名望远远不够，前国际足联主席若昂•阿维兰热和现任主席塞普•布拉特一样，他知道你需要想办法去迎合国际组织的领导人。这就是为什么特立尼达和多巴哥的杰克•沃纳以及其他一些人，有那么大的权力而成为2011年贿赂丑闻的目标，最终导致了他的辞职。

他被控从竞争国际足联主席的卡塔尔人穆罕默德•本•哈曼处收取现金，现在又卷入了另一项腐败丑闻。沃纳被认为拉拢加勒比足联成员国中起到了重要的作用。

各国足球协会都在呼吁国际足联的改革，好像这些罪名都没有落在他们自己身上似的。国际足联可以采取外部监控的方法，但不足以对抗腐败，除非各个国家的足球协会也同样增加透明度。




原文：

Activists in May protesting the World Cup in Brasilia.

Revelations of match fixing and questions about the selection of Qatar to host the World Cup in 2022 are only the most recent scandals to plague the soccer governing body. Now some are asking for the end of FIFA or for major reforms to ensure oversight of an organization with significant political and economic influence.

How can the world’s most popular sport avoid the traps of corruption?

Countries Must Push for Reform

Daniel A. Medina is a contributing soccer writer for Paste Magazine. He is on Twitter.

FIFA, in its current form, should be abolished. The reasons are many but chief among them is the organization’s complete disregard for transparency, which allows, and some say encourages, corruption at the highest levels. FIFA’s secret ballots give little incentive to delegates to reform themselves or the shady process by which they select host countries. The Sunday Times’s investigation that exposed alleged corruption in the bidding process to host the 2022 World Cup in Qatar is just the tip of the iceberg.

Elected in 1998, President Sepp Blatter has overseen possibly the most scandal-ridden era in the organization’s 110-year history. He has publicly spoken of a “shared sporting culture” globally, but has corporatized the World Cup through lucrative sponsorship deals with multinationals, which have enriched FIFA and usually left the host country reeling in debt.

Take Brazil, for example. When FIFA awarded the country the World Cup in 2007, it promised the Brazilian people that the tournament would be predominantly funded by private, not public, funds. Today, according to Brazil’s own published financial records, state spending on stadiums is estimated at $4 billion, with an additional $7 billion spent on infrastructure. The astronomical figures have enraged a Brazilian public that says the funds should have been spent on education and boosting the nation’s crumbling health care system, among other things. In response, they have taken to the streets across the country and demanded answers from FIFA and their own government. Blatter has responded by urging protesters “not to use football to further their demands.”

The only logical step for dissolving FIFA is for its members to boycott it. They must demand a change in leadership, a new constitution that guarantees transparency in voting and reforms to an unequal funding structure that is so often skewed toward wealthy nations. Soccer will suffer if FIFA isn’t radically transformed, and it may be that its members are the only ones capable of transforming it.

A Red Card for FIFA

Matt Negrin is writing a book about soccer fans around the world and at the World Cup. His website is awayandhome.com.

A friend of mine who lives in São Paulo told me that if you really love soccer, you have to love just soccer. Meaning, you can't mix the beautiful game with the demons swirling inside the almost defiantly corrupt institutions like FIFA and the Brazilian government.

A friend of mine who lives in São Paulo told me that if you really love soccer, you have to love just soccer. Meaning, you can't mix the beautiful game with the demons swirling inside the almost defiantly corrupt institutions like FIFA and the Brazilian government.

The problem is that it's impossible not to. For the past two months I've traveled the world in search of the best soccer fans on the planet. It's still a close race as to who's the most dedicated, but one thing is undeniable: Almost all of them despise FIFA.

When the latest round of bribery allegations surfaced, nobody who follows international soccer seemed surprised at all. Because this has happened before, and it will probably happen again. Exactly how many yellow cards is FIFA allowed to accumulate?

Perhaps the real question is this: Why do we need FIFA?

Look past the private jets and satirically formal voting sessions and you're left with an overpaid group of people who organize soccer games for a living. A junior-high student could do that in Microsoft Excel, and – bonus – not be responsible for hundreds of deaths in a Middle Eastern country that was probably selected for a World Cup because of bribes.

I don't understand why FIFA is necessary for two countries to play a soccer game with each other. Most of them have thousands of citizens who play pickup with ease. "Hi, Costa Rica? It's the Netherlands. Does Tuesday night work for you?"

But oh, when the World Cup draw rolls around, what would we do without that four-hour pageant of ball-selecting drama/variety show dancing? Surely some genius at M.I.T. can develop an app that randomizes 32 teams into eight groups.

Last weekend, Brazil's national team saw the FIFA bus that they'll take to their games – and on it was the word "Brazil," with a Z, not "Brasil," which is how Brazilians spell it. It would be easy to call the international soccer body out of touch, but unfortunately, those letters aren't the only thing that's backward with FIFA.

Fix Corruption at the Local Level

Mauricio Savarese is a Brazilian journalist and co-author of “A to Zico: an Alphabet of Brazilian Football.” His blog is called A Brazilian Operating in This Area.

FIFA's leaders deserve credit for modernizing the governing body and making soccer more global than the United Nations: the score currently stands at 209 FIFA members to 193 U.N. member states. That has translated into media attention, huge profits and plenty of countries bidding to host FIFA’s main source of income, the World Cup. The billions in profit that FIFA stands to make show that not all is wrong with the secretive organization.

FIFA's problem with corruption lies in its growing global reach. Reputation is never enough to elect a FIFA president. The former FIFA president João Havelange, just like current president, Sepp Blatter, knew that you needed to court the heads of national associations. That explains why Trinidad & Tobago’s Jack Warner, among others, became powerful enough to be the target of a 2011 bribery investigation that led to Warner's resignation.

He was accused of accepting cash from Mohamed bin Hammam, a Qatari who was then running for FIFA president and is now embroiled in another corruption scandal. Warner was seen as instrumental in bringing the votes of Caribbean Football Union members.

International soccer associations have called for reforms at FIFA as if none of the blame belonged to them. FIFA could use external oversight. But it won’t be enough to fight corruption unless transparency becomes a key issue at the national level, too.

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