Football fiasco一败涂地的足球
May 18th 2006 | WASHINGTON, DC
From The Economist print edition
SILVIO BERLUSCONI says it was a rigged[1] contest that his side won. Not Italy's election: its football championship. His team, AC Milan, finished second in both the past two seasons to Juventus. （1）But the Turin team is at the centre of a match-fixing scandal that may be the biggest even this country has seen. On May 16th, less than a month before the start of the soccer World Cup in Germany, Italy's top sporting body, the Olympic committee, put the national football federation under emergency rule. The federation's president had q_______① after claims that he ignored evidence of misconduct by officials, referees and players. The committee chose a 75-year-old former stockmarket regulator, Guido Rossi, in his place.
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西尔维奥•贝鲁斯科尼说，他那一方赢的是一场被操纵的比赛。他这说的不是意大利选举，而是足球赛。他的AC米兰队在过去两个赛季都排在尤文图斯之后居于次席。但是尤文图斯（注：尤文图斯俱乐部位于意大利西北部城市都灵）目前正陷入意大利有史以来最大的一件操纵比赛的丑闻漩涡之中。（译者按：“fix”在这里是“操控，操纵”的意思，“this country has seen”本义是“该国所见证的”，意译为“有史以来”。）5月16日，亦即距德国世界杯开幕不到一个月的时候，意大利最高体育组织——奥委会对国家足协实行了紧急管制。由于被指称对比赛官员、裁判以及球员的不轨表现坐视不理，足协主席已经离任，奥委会挑选了75岁的前股市调节员吉多•罗西接替他的位置。
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The evidence in the case comes from prosecutors in Naples who are looking into 19 games that were played in Italy's top division in the 2004-05 season. Seven matches involved Juventus, whose board has now resigned. （2）Shares in the publicly traded club have plunged as investors fret that Juventus could be stripped of its titles, and even demoted. Il Sole-24 Ore, a financial daily, r________② that would cost the club as much as �120m ($160m) in lost sponsorship and television revenues.
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该事件有关证据源自那不勒斯检察官，他们对2004～2005赛季意大利甲级联赛中的10场比赛进行了调查，目前董事会已集体辞职的尤文图斯参加了其中7场。由于投资者担心尤文图斯可能被剥夺冠军头衔甚至降级，该上市俱乐部的股票已经迅速下跌。（译者按：“public”为“上市的”；“plunge”是指“突降，俯冲”，引申为“快速下跌”；”as”是连词，“因为”；“fret”是从句谓语，意为“担心，焦虑”；“strip of”指“剥夺”；“demote”是“使降级”的意思。）金融日报《Il Sole-24 Ore》（《一日二十四小时》）估算，这将导致俱乐部因失去赞助商和电视转播收入而损失高达1.2亿欧元（约合1.6亿美元）。
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Juventus's general manager, Luciano Moggi, also resigned on May 14th. Leaked extracts from intercepted[2] telephone conversations suggest that he habitually secured amenable[3] referees for his team, rewarding those who favoured it, and p________③ those who did not. They record him boasting of locking match officials in the changing room as a reprisal[4], and urging a television journalist to tamper with[5] a slow-motion replay to hide a wrong decision in Juventus's favour. （3）His reputation for fixing matches was such that the interior minister in Mr Berlusconi's government once rang him to ask for help for his local side, playing in a lower division. Some weeks later, the transcripts show Mr Moggi taking a grateful call from the club's chairman. 共2页: 1 [2] 下一页