Football fiasco
一败涂地的足球
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_______①after 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.
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。
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.
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）。
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.
尤文图斯总经理卢奇亚诺·莫吉也于5月14日辞职。根据窃听得到的一段电话交谈记录，莫吉经常为自己的球队安排合适的裁判人选，对于那些袒护球队的人给予奖赏，否则就加以惩罚。检察官的记录表明，他吹嘘自己曾将比赛官员关在更衣室里以示报复，还怂恿一名电视记者篡改一个慢动作回放镜头，以隐瞒一项有利于尤文图斯的错误决议。莫吉操纵比赛名闻遐迩，甚至连贝鲁斯科尼政府的内政部长也曾打电话给他，请他给他家乡一支乙级俱乐部提供帮助。（译者按：“local”除了有“地方的，本地的”的意思之外，还可指“家乡的，乡土的”；“side”常用于表示“比赛或竞争中的一方”；“a lower division”直译为“低一级的联赛”，即乙级联赛。）记录表明，几周之后，莫吉接到了该俱乐部主席打来的感谢电话。
Football fans have long s________④ that Juventus, which for years was universally associated with the Fiat automotive group and a symbol of Italian industrial pride, gets unduly[6] favourable treatment. （4）But investigations in Naples and three other cities point to corrupt practices far beyond Turin. Several teams are involved. One of them is AC Milan.
多年来，尤文图斯始终与菲亚特汽车集团保持着千丝万缕的联系，是意大利工业界引以为豪的代表。球迷们一直怀疑尤文图斯受到了不正当偏袒。不过，那不勒斯以及其它三个城市的调查人员指出，舞弊行为绝非只尤文图斯一家俱乐部才有，（译者按：“corrupt practice”是一名词短语，表示“舞弊，行贿”。）好几支球队都涉嫌舞弊，其中之一就是AC米兰。
[QUIZ]
1. 根据首字母以及括号内的词性提示和英文释义填入单词（注意复数、时态形式变化等）：
①q________（vi.to leave a job, school etc, especially without finishing it completely）
②r________（vt.to guess a number or amount, without calculating it exactly）
③p________（vt.to make someone suffer because they have done something wrong）
④s________（vi.to think that something is probably true, especially something bad）
2. [NOTES]
1. rig vt. to dishonestly arrange the result of an election or competition before it happens [= fix]:操纵（竞选或比赛结果）
2. intercept vt. to stop something or someone that is going from one place to another before they get there:中途阻止；截留
3. amenable adj.
1)willing to accept what someone says or does without arguing:听话的，顺从的（与to连用）
2)suitable for a particular type of treatment（与for/to连用）适合……的
4. reprisal n. something violent or harmful which you do to punish someone for something bad they have done to you [≈ revenge, retaliation]:报复，报仇（against）
do sth. in reprisal (for something)为了报复……而……
5. tamper with sth. to touch something or make changes to it without permission, especially in order to deliberately damage it 擅自接触某物或进行改动（尤指为了故意破坏）；篡改
6. unduly adj. more than is normal or reasonable 不正常地，不合理地；过分地
如：unduly worried/concerned/anxious etc 过分担心/关心/焦虑
[KEY TO QUIZ]
1. ①quit 退出，离职；②reckons 估算；③punishing 惩罚（用分词，与前面的rewarding对应）；④suspected 怀疑
