Welcome to the World Cup in Brazil, brought to you by Fifa, a corporate governance disaster that is also one of the most successful multinational enterprises on earth.

欢迎收看国际足联(Fifa)为您带来的巴西世界杯。国际足联既是企业治理的负面典型，又是世界上最为成功的跨国机构之一。

The contrast between the Fédération Internationale de Football Association’s cronyism, managerial entrenchment and corruption, and its achievement in spreading the British version of football around the world (leaving the US game in the dust), is striking. It demonstrates that Fifa has enormous strengths as well as egregious weaknesses.

一方面，国际足联任人唯亲，管理守旧，贪污腐败；另一方面，它将英式足球传播到世界各地（令美式橄榄球望尘莫及），功绩卓著。这表明，国际足联极具实力，但缺点同样突出。

The decision to award super-hot Qatar the 2022 World Cup has pushed Fifa’s contradictions to their limits. That choice is now disowned even by Sepp Blatter, its 78-year-old president, who covets a fifth term as “supreme leader” (Fifa’s ayatollah-like job description). If Fifa cannot reform, much will be lost.

将2022年世界杯主办权交给气候极为炎热的卡塔尔之事，更是将国际足联的这对矛盾推向极致。就连78岁的现任主席、觊觎在“最高领导人”（国际足联对这一职位的描述堪比“阿亚图拉”）位置干上第五个任期的塞普•布拉特(Sepp Blatter)，现在也要与这一决定撇清关系。如果国际足联不改革，损失将是巨大的。

The intriguing thing about Fifa is that a Swiss non-governmental organisation, which has operated in an unaccountable way, with a highly conflicted (and in some cases corrupt) relationship between its leaders and the football associations that are its closest equivalent to shareholders, has done so well.

国际足联的有趣之处在于，一家位于瑞士的非政府组织在实际运作中不负责任，领导人和各足协（近似于股东）冲突严重（有时存在腐败关系），但它又表现得如此优秀。

Soccer captured 43 per cent of the global sports event market by value in 2009, compared with 13 per cent for American football and 12 per cent for baseball, according to AT Kearney, the consultancy, and is growing faster. It has even begun penetrating US consciousness thanks to television coverage of European games.

根据咨询机构科尔尼(AT Kearney)的数据，2009年，按照金额计算，足球占据全球体育赛事市场的43%，美式橄榄球为13%，棒球为12%。并且足球比赛正在以更快的速度发展。由于美国电视转播欧洲足球比赛，足球甚至开始入侵美国人的意识。

Fifa is fortunate in having a superior product to market: football is a more elegant game than the complex strategy and head-crunching violence of American football, and is easier to play in parks or in schools. The accessibility of the amateur game helps to reinforce the professional sport.

国际足联的幸运之处在于，它营销的产品更优越：比起战术复杂、头破血流的美式橄榄球，足球更为优雅，也更适合公园和学校场地。业余足球的普及，有助于巩固职业足球。

But that is not a sufficient explanation: basketball and baseball are played casually, and Venezuela and other countries have shown that it is possible to ruin even a fail-safe commodity – in that case oil and gas production – through rent-seeking cronyism. Soccer could have been similarly cursed.

但这样的解释还不够充分：篮球和棒球也颇受业余爱好者欢迎，而委内瑞拉等国的经验证明，就连带有“自动防错机制”的商品——即石油和天然气生产——也可能毁于寻租的裙带关系之手。足球本有可能遭受类似的厄运。

Fifa has avoided this fate until now because it has two competitive advantages over US sporting bodies. The first is that football is integrated – amateur and professional games are unified through associations. Professional soccer leagues such as Serie A in Italy and Germany’s Bundesliga are powerful and their clubs are wealthy, but they do not control the national game.

国际足联之前一直得以避免厄运，是因为相比美国体育机构，它拥有两项竞争优势。第一，足球是一项“融合”的运动——足协将业余和职业足球统一起来。意甲(Serie A)和德甲(Bundesliga)等职业足球联赛影响力强，俱乐部富有，但全国的足球运动不受它们控制。

This sounds arcane but it makes a huge difference to the incentives: leagues exist to advance their own interests and those of their member clubs, while the central task of the associations is to cultivate the game. The state of baseball is of secondary interest to Major League Baseball; football is Fifa’s raison d'être.

听上去很晦涩，但这一点大大影响了动机：联赛的存在是为了谋求自己和成员俱乐部的利益，而协会的核心任务是发展这项运动。棒球运动的现状只是美国职业棒球大联盟(Major League Baseball)第二关心的事情，但足球是国际足联存在的理由。

Fifa’s second advantage is that it is truly multinational: it launched a sustained push into emerging markets before US and European multinationals such as Coca-Cola and Adidas, two of the big World Cup sponsors. It adjusted early to the shift in the global economy.

国际足联的第二项优势是，它是真正跨国性的组织：它不断努力打入新兴市场，动作比世界杯两大赞助商可口可乐(Coca-Cola)和阿迪达斯(Adidas)等欧美跨国企业还早。它很早就开始适应全球经济格局的变化。

“Fifa took resources and put them into Africa and Asia, and that has paid great dividends,” says Stefan Szymanski, professor of sport management at the University of Michigan. “US sports have remained American because there has been no money to expand overseas.”

“国际足联掌握资源，将其投入非洲和亚洲，此举带来了很大回报，”密歇根大学(University of Michigan)体育管理学教授斯特凡•希曼斯基(Stefan Szymanski)表示，“美国的体育运动仍然是美国的，因为它们没有用于海外扩张的资金。”

Fifa’s advantages have given football strength in depth and reach, and transformed the World Cup into a global tournament on a par with the Olympic Games (also run by a Swiss-based sports association).

国际足联的优势让足球兼具深度和广度，将世界杯发展成可与奥运会（也是由位于瑞士的体育协会经营）比肩的全球性赛事。

All of this could be undermined by Fifa’s flaws.

但这些优势都可能被国际足联的缺陷葬送。

Since 1961, when it was reformed in a cack-handed way, it has been managed through a structure that seems ideally designed to encourage cronyism and dysfunction. “Fifa is a patronage organisation. The people at the centre disburse financial rewards to those at the periphery responsible for electing them,” says Roger Pielke, a professor at the University of Colorado.

1961年，国际足联进行了一次并不成功的改革。自那以来，它的管理结构似乎成为滋生裙带关系和运转不良的土壤。“国际足联是一家‘庇护性’组织。处于核心的人向外围那些给他们投票的人发放经济奖励，”科罗拉多大学(University of Colorado)教授罗杰•皮尔克(Roger Pielke)表示。

No board of directors oversees its president and executives. Instead, a 24-member “executive committee” of national association representatives, which is embroiled in allegations (and some confirmed cases) of corruption, wields patronage in an opaque fashion. Mr Blatter, like Fifa presidents before him, has exploited this to entrench himself.

国际足联的主席和高管没有董事会的监督。相反，由各国足协代表组成的24人“执委会”以不透明的方式提供庇护，并卷入了腐败指控（一些已证实）。就像他以前的主席一样，布拉特也用这种手段来巩固自己的地位。

It should be swept away but it suits too many insiders to keep things as they are. Meanwhile, Fifa is bitterly divided between European countries, particularly the UK, that want Mr Blatter to resign and Fifa to combat corruption, and African and Asian officials who portray this as an attempt by the west to seize control of the game.

这种现象应得到整顿，但太多的内部人士希望维持现状。与此同时，国际足联分歧严重：一方是希望布拉特辞职、国际足联打击腐败的欧洲国家，尤其是英国；一方是声称西方试图借此夺取足球赛事控制权的非洲和亚洲官员。

Trouble looms. The Sunday Times has accused Mohammed bin Hammam, the Qatari former Fifa vice-president, of paying bribes to African officials to bring the 2022 World Cup to Qatar. Mr bin Hammam stepped down in 2012 after Fifa found that he paid for votes. The newspaper has published emails allegedly showing that bribes were paid from a $5m slush fund.

危机隐现。《星期日泰晤士报》指责前国际足联副主席、卡塔尔人穆罕默德•本•哈曼(Mohamed bin Hammam)贿赂非洲官员，使卡塔尔赢得2022年世界杯主办权。在被国际足联发现贿选后，本•哈曼于2012年离开。《星期日泰晤士报》公布了电子邮件记录，根据邮件，贿赂来自一只500万美元的贿赂基金。

Sports associations and leagues have proved fragile before and it is easy to imagine a Fifa split. What if the World Cup were removed from Qatar, and it held a tournament for resentful African and Asian nations at the same time? The European leagues, with their €20bn annual revenues, could sever their links with the rebels.

以往事实已经证明，体育协会和联赛是脆弱的。不难想象国际足联分裂的场景。如果卡塔尔被取消世界杯主办权，然后卡塔尔为心怀不满的非洲和亚洲国家同期举办一场联赛，结果会怎样？年收入达到200亿欧元的欧洲联赛可能将与“叛军”一刀两断。

That would be a tragedy, not only because it could be avoided through governance reform, but because it would destroy Fifa’s achievements since 1904. It is a blatantly flawed enterprise but it has achieved great things. Think what it might do if it were run properly.

这将是场悲剧，一来它本可以通过治理改革来避免，二来这将破坏国际足联1904年以来的成就。国际足联具有明显缺陷，但也有丰功伟绩。试想，假如管理得当，它将取得何等的成就。