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原文地址：http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/15/sports/olympics/15soccer.html?_r=1&ref=asia&oref=slogin
标题：China Loves Its Soccer. Its Team? Don’t Ask. 中国爱足球。她的足球队呢？最好别问。
作者：EDWARD WONG（看姓，好象是香港人）
正文：
QINHUANGDAO, China — The kick in the groin was the low point of the Olympic Games for hundreds of millions of Chinese sports fans.
秦皇岛，中国 — 怒向腹股沟的一脚对于几亿中国体育迷而言是奥运会的最糟时刻。
It came 52 minutes into the China-Belgium men’s soccer match Sunday when a Chinese player, Tan Wangsong, having just missed the ball, swung his foot straight into the private parts of a Belgian player, Sébastien Pocognoli, leaving him writhing in pain on the field. The kick resulted in the game’s first red card and automatic ejection. The second, 12 minutes later, was charged to the Chinese team captain, Zheng Zhi, for elbowing an opposing player.
当周日中国对比利时的男足比赛进行到52分钟的时候，中国球员TAN WANGSONG（不写中文是为了留点面子）扑空未能踢到足球却直接命中比利时球员Sébastien Pocognoli的私处，使其因剧痛在场中扭动。那一脚被出示了全场第一张红牌并罚出场外。12分钟后，因肘击对方球员，中国队队长ZHENG ZHI，吃了第二张红牌。
As usual, jokes about the Chinese team fanned across the Internet: “The Chinese team just won two red medals.” “Our soccer team won the gold medal in martial arts.” “China has had a weird year, with a freak snowstorm, the Tibetan riots and an earthquake, but the performance of our soccer team shows that some things never change.”
一如往常，关于中国队的笑话散布网络。“中国队刚刚赢得了两枚红色奖牌。”“我国球队赢得了武术金牌。”“中国经历了异于往常的一年，反常的暴风雪、西藏暴动以及一场地震。然而，我们球队的表现告诉我们有些东西从未改变过。”
In its quest for sports supremacy, China is placing its hopes for winning the medal count on a panoply of athletes honed to near perfection in sports like gymnastics, diving, rowing, table tennis and hurdling. It has shown its athletic prowess by climbing atop the medals table in the opening days of competition. The nation, though, demands much less of its men’s soccer team.
为寻求称霸体坛，中国寄望于像体操、跳水、赛艇、乒乓球以及跨栏等项目上运动员们磨练出的近乎完美的华丽表现而在奖牌榜胜出。赛程开始的前几天日子里，中国已经表现出在体育方面的骁勇善战并在奖牌榜领跑。
After a 3-0 loss to Brazil in this coastal city, the team exited the Summer Games with exactly what its legions of exhausted fans expected — no victories in three games.
在这海滨城市3比0输给巴西队后，球队正如已心力交瘁的球迷们希望的那样离开了夏季奥运会 — 三场比赛无一胜局。
Soccer may be the sport the Chinese care about above all else, but it is also the one that most frustrates and disappoints them. The men's national and Olympic teams are the objects of scorn, shame and much hand-wringing.
足球或许是中国人最关心的运动，但也是最让他们泄气失望的运动。国家队和国奥队是嘲笑、耻辱的对象且相当令人绝望。
For Chinese men proud of international sports stars like Yao Ming in basketball and the hurdler Liu Xiang, the soccer team endures as the ultimate symbol of humiliation. After the Chinese women’s soccer team beat Argentina, 2-0, on Tuesday, its coach, Shang Ruihua, said, “Our strikers did such a great job that I even told them they should start playing for our men’s team now.”
对于为篮球明星姚明和跨栏明星刘翔感到自豪的中国人而言，足球队作为难堪的终极象徵历久弥新。周二，中国女足2比0打败阿根廷后，女足教练商瑞华说“我们的前锋表现出色，我甚至跟他们说你们现在都可以为男足踢球了。”
After the men lost to Brazil, angry fans outside the stadium held a miniprotest that broke up when the riot police arrived.
男足败于巴西后，愤怒的球迷在球场外搞了小型抗议活动，但被防暴警察解散。
“We play soccer like the Brazilians play Ping-Pong,” Li Weifeng, 30, the new team captain, said with a deflated voice afterward.
赛后现年30岁的新队长LI WEIFENG沮丧地说，“我们踢足球（水平）就跟巴西人打乒乓球一样。”
Many Chinese would say that is an insult to Brazilian table tennis players.
很多中国人可能会说这是对巴西乒乓球运动员的侮辱。
“It’s so beyond an embarrassment that it almost seems like a comedy,” a popular soccer columnist, Li Chengpeng, said in an interview before the match. “We’ve cried our tears dry, and now it’s time for us to enjoy the big show, because you never know how our team is going to lose this time.”
“这已经远不止尴尬，更像是一场喜剧”，广受欢迎的足球专栏作家李承鹏在赛前接受采访时说，“我们已经哭干了眼泪，该是我们欣赏大型秀的时候了，因为你永远都不知道我们的球队这次会以何种方式输掉。”
Soccer presents the biggest conundrum for the Chinese sports machine — the country has the money, the population and the fan base to put together a world-class team, yet has not succeeded. The men’s national team has been to the World Cup only once, when Japan and South Korea were the hosts in 2002, but it failed to score a goal in three games. In 2004, Chinese fans nearly rioted in Beijing when China lost the Asian Cup final to Japan, 3-1. The latest embarrassment came in June, when the team lost to Iraq in a World Cup qualifying match, 2-1. China was later eliminated from qualifying for the 2010 World Cup in South Africa.
足球为中国体育机器呈现的最大的谜团 — 这个国家有钞票，有人口，有球迷基础，足可以打造世界级的球队，但尚未成功。男子国家队只参加过一次世界杯，是在2002年日韩作为主办国的时候，结果三场比赛一球未进。2004年，当中国在亚洲杯决赛中3比1输给日本后，中国球迷在北京几近暴乱。最近一次的难堪是在今年六月，中国在世界杯资格赛中以2比1输给了伊拉克，随后中国就与2010年南非世界杯无缘。
Chinese leaders generally try to silence widespread criticism of national symbols, but with men’s soccer, the government allows people to vent.
中国领导人一向试图平息对国家象徵的广泛批评，但唯独对于男足，政府允许人们发泄。
Everyone piles on, including state news media like CCTV and Xinhua, celebrity sports bloggers, even other athletes and coaches. Fans also openly deride the head of the government-run Chinese Football Association, Xie Yalong, a former senior official from Shaanxi Province. “Xie Yalong must resign!” became a loud chant at the last two Olympic matches, and Xie was seen leaving the Belgium match early.
所有人都在口诛笔伐，包括官方媒体CCTV、新华社、体育博客名人，甚至是其他球员和教练。球迷还公开嘲讽官方中国足协的主席、前陕西省高级官员XIE YALONG。“XIE YALONG必须下课”成为了上两场奥运比赛的响亮口号，在与比利时的比赛中有人看到XIE提前离场。
Many Chinese sports analysts and scholars point to endemic corruption within the association as one cause of the sport’s ills. The association started the current league system in 1994, and soccer became the first sport to achieve commercial success in China, with sponsors pouring in millions of dollars.
很多中国体育分析人士和学者指出足协内部滋生的腐败是这个体育项目百病缠身的一个病因。足协在1994年启动了目前的联赛体制，足球凭靠赞助商数以百万计的美元的投入下成为了第一个在中国获得商业成功的运动。
Xu Guoqi, a professor of East Asian history at Kalamazoo College and the author of a new book on China and the Olympics, said Chinese soccer would improve only after the rule of law is established in China. He said disappointment with soccer could lead to the next “major revolution” in China. And he was not joking.
Kalamazoo大学东亚历史教授以及一本关于中国与奥运的书的作者，徐国琦说，中国足球只有在法治确立在中国后才会发展。他说，对足球的失望可能会导致下一场“大革命”。他并未在开玩笑。
“Without rule of law, corruption will get involved, and nobody is responsible to anyone,” said Xu, who wrote an op-ed article in The Washington Post last month lamenting the state of Chinese soccer. “If Chinese continue to be obsessed with soccer, they’ll definitely demand something dramatic, something political or involving rule of law. It will start with sports, and then it will move onto something bigger.”
徐说，“没有法治，腐败会滋生，没人会对谁负责。”他上个月在华盛顿邮报写了一篇特约文章哀叹中国足球i现状。“如果中国人继续为足球着迷，他们最终会要求一些戏剧性的、政治性的或法治的事情。由体育而起，然后会转到更大的事情上。”
Big money is part of the problem, he said, with most Chinese male soccer players making annual salaries of more than one million yuan, or $146,000, in a country where the average citizen’s income is less than $3,000. It goes to their heads, he said.
巨额薪水是问题的一部分，徐说，大部分中国男足球员年薪高于100万元，约合14万6千美元，而在这个国家普通民众的收入少于3000美元。徐说，高薪使得球员们飘飘然自我陶醉。
The Chinese news media often report on the flashy lives that many soccer players lead. Players have been caught with drugs and prostitutes. Such behavior is not that unusual for international soccer stars, but is out of the norm for Chinese athletes.
中国的新闻媒体经常报道许多球员们光鲜浮华的生活。球员们还因毒品和嫖娼被捕过。虽然此般行径在国际球星中并不鲜见，但却不符合中国运动员的行为规范。
Women’s players in China are much more grounded, Xu said, perhaps because their salaries are a fraction of the men’s. The women’s national team, nicknamed the Iron Roses, has seen relative success, reaching the World Cup final in 1999, when it lost to the United States in a penalty-kick shootout.
相较而言，中国女足球员们安分守己很多。徐说，或许这个是因为她们的薪水只有男足球员们的零头有关。女子国家队被人昵称为“铿锵玫瑰”业已取得了相对的成功。她们1999年曾打入世界杯决赛，在点球决战中败给了美国。
Lu You, who anchors a soccer show on CCTV, also said outsized incomes and high expectations had crippled men’s soccer.
CCTV足球节目主持人陆幽也说，过高的收入和期望使得男子足球步履蹒跚。
“If they win, we treat them as heroes,” she said. “If they lose, we say, ‘Go to hell.’ ”
“如果他们赢了，我们会把他们当英雄”，她说，“如果他们输了，我们就说‘去死吧’。”
Other factors could be hobbling men’s soccer, experts said. Perhaps too few children are being encouraged to play. Also, the state system of training athletes works well in sports in which individuals excel — table tennis or gymnastics, for example — but falls short in soccer because of the cost of sustaining a team, some experts said.
专家们说其他因素也在妨碍男子足球。可能是被鼓励从事足球运动的孩子们太少。再者，有些专家称，国家训练运动员的体制虽然在个人项目上如乒乓球、体操等卓有成效，但在足球上就有缺陷，因为其维持一个球队的费用比较高。
Li, the columnist, said the government could easily invest $12 million to train a table tennis player, but the resources needed to properly develop a soccer team are beyond the means of the state. A market-based system has to be put in place, he said.
专栏作家李说，政府可以轻易投入1200万美元去训练一名乒乓球运动员，但是正确发展一支足球队所需的资源却超过政府能力。他说，必须引入市场机制。
“It represents the most outdated management system that still exists in this country,” he said. “You can’t run a soccer team the same way you train table tennis players, which is exactly what they’re doing right now.”
他说，“这显示最过时的管理机制依然在这个国家运行”，“你不能像训练乒乓球运动员一样去管理一支足球队，然而他们正在这么做。”
Against Brazil, Chinese fans tried to leave their ambivalence at home. They came with red-painted faces, draped in flags and wearing red headbands that said, “China must win!” The 33,000-seat stadium was nearly full.
面对巴西之战，中国球迷试图把矛盾心情抛在家中。他们涂红了脸，身披旗帜，绑上红色头巾，上面写着“中国必胜”。3万3千个座位的体育场座无虚席。
The sheer love among Chinese for soccer was demonstrated by the loud welcome they gave the Brazilian players, especially Ronaldinho.
中国人对足球的纯真热爱在他们给予巴西球员尤其是罗纳尔迪尼奥的热烈欢迎中尽显无遗。
The cheers went up again when Diego scored the first goal of the night for Brazil. “I love their technique,” said Cui Wei, 30, a high school teacher who had driven five hours to see the match. “It’s gentle and soft.”
当迭戈为巴西射入当晚第一粒进球，欢呼声再次四起。“我喜欢他们的技术”，30岁的高中教师崔玮（音译）说，“他们打法柔和”。她开了五个小时的车来观看比赛。
She added, “They enjoy playing soccer, while the Chinese view it as a fight.”
她补充说，“他们享受足球，而中国球员当成打架。”
After Brazil scored twice more in the second half, fans chanted for the resignation of Xie, the head of the soccer association. The fans began trickling home before the game ended.
巴西在下半场又进两个球后，球迷高喊XIE下课，XIE是足协主席。球迷们在比赛终场前就开始陆陆续续回家了。
Li, the Chinese captain, faced dozens of disappointed Chinese reporters after the game.
中国队队长LI在赛后面对了失望的中国记者们。
“The Chinese people have intense wishes for a strong Chinese team, but we need more tolerance and time,” he said. “Like you, we also want to improve, to make a change.”
他说，“中国人民强烈期望一支强大的中国队，但是我们需要更多的包容和时间”，“和你们一样，我们也想进步，也想有所改变”。
His dejected look said that perhaps he had taken to heart a common assessment of the team by Chinese fans: “There are two things stopping the Chinese soccer team from going outside Asia to take part in international games: their left feet and their right feet.”
他垂头丧气的表情好像在表明他对中国球迷对中国队的普遍评价痛感于心：“有两样东西在阻拦中国足球队冲出亚洲走向世界比赛：他们的左脚，还有他们的右脚。”
[ 本帖最后由 ile2000 于 2008-8-16 04:14 编辑 ] |
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