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“I don’t trade in the market, I am the market,” he once said. Mino Raiola, the Dutch-Italian football agent who has died aged 54, embodied the rise of the agent in the modern game.
他曾經說，「我不在市場上交易，我就是市場。」享年54歲的荷蘭-義大利足球經紀人米諾•拉伊奧拉(Mino Raiola)體現了經紀人在現代足球中的崛起。
Born poor in southern Italy, he grew up in the Netherlands, where his workaholic immigrant parents built a chain of pizza restaurants. Raiola likened his family to the Corleones of the Godfather films, only without violence. His parents taught him a service ethic: their pizzerias were extensions of their home, every customer should be treated as family, and if you cleaned the restaurant toilets, people would come back.
他出生於義大利南部的貧窮家庭，在荷蘭長大。他的父母是工作狂，移民到荷蘭後在那裏建立了一家披薩連鎖店。拉伊奧拉把他的家庭比作《教父》電影裏的考利昂家族，只不過沒有暴力。他的父母教給他一種服務倫理：他們的披薩店是他們家的延伸，每個顧客都應該被當作家人對待，如果你打掃了餐廳的廁所，人們會回來。
He took this ethic into football. He was a born trader, a millionaire aged 19 after buying and selling a McDonald’s in the small city of Haarlem, and he began using his language skills to move Dutch footballers to his parents’ homeland.
他把這種道德觀帶入了足球。他是一名天生的商人，19歲時在小城市哈勒姆買賣麥當勞後成爲百萬富翁，他開始利用自己的語言技能將荷蘭足球運動員帶到父母的祖國。
In a football industry obsessed with appearances, he always dressed sloppily. “I am fat and small,” he once explained. “People underestimated me for a long time. They said, ‘He can’t even dress normally.’ That was my chance.” His break came in 1996, when he discovered a Czech footballer, Pavel Nedved, shortly before the world did. The timing was impeccable. The European Court of Justice’s new Bosman ruling allowed out-of-contract players to move throughout the EU without transfer fees. Meanwhile, television money was flooding football. Players needed trusted advisers.
在癡迷於外表的足球行業，他總是穿著邋遢。「我又矮又胖，」他曾經這樣解釋。「很長一段時間，人們低估了我。他們說，『他甚至不能穿正常的衣服。』這就是我的機會。」他的突破出現在1996年，當時他發掘了捷克球員「鐵人」帕維爾·內德維德(Pavel Nedved)，不消多時，內德維德成爲世界級的球星。時機恰到好處。歐洲法院新的博斯曼裁決允許合同到期的球員在不收取轉會費的情況下在歐盟範圍內轉會。與此同時，從電視上賺來的錢正湧入足球市場。球員需要信任的顧問。
Raiola prided himself on his small stable of clients, which allowed him to offer each warm personal service, as if they were restaurant customers. Former Dutch defender Rody Turpijn recalls hours of talking about life on a café terrace: “He felt almost like family. And he was always available.”
拉伊奧拉爲自己爲數不多的客戶感到自豪，這讓他能夠爲每一個人提供熱情的個人服務，就像他們是當年家裏的餐廳的顧客一樣。前荷蘭後衛羅迪•特爾平(Rody Turpijn)回憶起在咖啡廳露臺上談了幾個小時的生活：「感覺他就像家人一樣。他總是有空的。」
Some players rang Raiola twice a day, though when Mario Balotelli reported that his house was on fire, Raiola suggested he try the fire brigade. Raiola demonstrated his loyalty to players with public rants against their clubs and managers, especially against his favourite enemy, Pep Guardiola, currently manager of Manchester City.
一些球員每天給拉伊奧拉打兩次電話，但當馬里奧·巴洛特利(Mario Balotelli)報告他的房子著火時，拉伊奧拉建議他去找消防隊。拉伊奧拉透過公開斥責俱樂部和教練來表達他對球員的忠誠，尤其是他最喜歡的敵人，現任曼城主帥瓜迪奧拉(Pep Guardiola)。
He urged his players to work like Nedved, who trained at his club as a kind of aperitif, and then trained harder in his garden. That was Raiola’s ethic: “Resting isn’t part of my profession.”
他敦促他的球員像內德維德一樣努力，內德維德把他在俱樂部的訓練當作開胃菜，之後在他的花園裏更努力地加練。這就是拉伊奧拉的職業道德：「休息不是我職業的一部分。」
He understood that even the smallest transfer of a lower-division journeyman could change somebody’s life. Whereas other agents aimed to stay on good terms with clubs, Raiola was a hardball negotiator, happy to walk away from the table, or lie about his player’s current salary. Rather than celebrating deals, he usually left worrying that the club might have paid even more had he pushed it.
他明白，即使是一個低級別球員的小金額轉會也可能改變一個人的生活。雖然其他經紀人的目標是與俱樂部保持良好關係，但拉伊奧拉是一個強硬的談判代表，樂於離開談判桌，或者謊報球員目前的工資。他通常不會慶祝交易，而是擔心如果他推動交易，俱樂部本可能會付出更多。
Wary of his players’ propensity to blow their money, he urged them to invest only in “bricks”, ideally in Amsterdam, “the world’s cheapest capital city”.
由於擔心他的球員有揮霍錢財的傾向，他敦促他們只投資「磚塊」，也就是房產，最好是在阿姆斯特丹，「世界上最便宜的首都」。
He considered himself the best agent, but not the best father. He estimated he spent 30 days a year at home in Monaco, and the rest visiting his beloved players. When his wife complained, “You have two official children and loads of unofficial ones,” he joked, “Which are the official ones?”
他認爲自己是最好的經紀人，但不是最好的父親。他估計自己每年有30天是在摩納哥的家中度過的，其餘的時間則是去看望他心愛的球員。當他的妻子抱怨說：「你有兩個正式的孩子和大量非正式的孩子，」他開玩笑說："哪些是正式的孩子？"
He criss-crossed Europe talking to club executives in seven languages, hearing their plans, foreseeing shifts in the transfer market. A decade ago, he realised early that Italian clubs were running out of money, while Paris Saint-Germain was headed for dominance. He pushed his client, Zlatan Ibrahimovic, to move from Milan to Paris. Ibrahimovic last week visited his “best friend” Raiola on his deathbed.
他穿梭於歐洲各地，用七種語言與俱樂部高階主管交談，聽取他們的計劃，預測轉會市場的變化。十年前，他很早就意識到義大利俱樂部的資金正在耗盡，而巴黎聖日耳曼正走向統治地位。他力勸自己的客戶茲拉坦·伊布拉希莫維奇(Zlatan Ibrahimovic)從米蘭搬到巴黎。伊布上週看望了他「最好的朋友」拉伊奧拉，送了他最後一程。
Rather than wait for clubs to make offers, Raiola decided where his players should go, then made it happen. In 2016, he orchestrated Paul Pogba’s move from Juventus to Manchester United. The transfer fee of €105mn was a world record, and Raiola made an estimated €48mn, contriving to get paid by both clubs and Pogba — confounding his claim he only worked for his players.
與其等待俱樂部的報價，拉伊奧拉決定他的球員應該去哪裏，然後讓它發生。2016年，他策劃了保羅·博格巴(Paul Pogba)從尤文圖斯轉會到曼聯。1.05億歐元的轉會費創下了世界紀錄，而拉伊奧拉估計賺了4800萬歐元，他設法從俱樂部和博格巴兩方獲得轉會費，這與他聲稱只為自己的球員工作的說法不符。
He then took advantage of United’s weak leadership to sell the club several more of his clients — something the club may now regret. He often attributed his success to the industry’s stupidity. “Other agents are even dumber than me,” he once joked.
然後，他利用曼聯薄弱的領導力，又向俱樂部出售了幾個他的客戶--俱樂部現在可能會後悔。他經常把自己的成功歸功於這個行業的愚蠢。他曾開玩笑說：「其他經紀人甚至比我還笨。」
His ambitions included reforming football’s global authority, Fifa, by becoming its president; running Italy as an “enlightened dictator” (and splitting the country into North and South); switching career to mergers and acquisitions, and buying a football club. He said his purchase of Queens Park Rangers was scuppered only by the goal that won them promotion to the Premier League.
他的雄心壯志包括成爲國際足聯主席，改革足球的全球權威；以「開明的獨裁者」的身份管理義大利(並將該國分裂爲南北兩派)；轉行進行併購，收購一家足球俱樂部。他說，他對女王公園巡遊者的收購之所以失敗，只是因爲那個讓他們晉級英超的進球。
In his final months he was negotiating football’s biggest transfer, the Norwegian Erling Braut Haaland’s move from Borussia Dortmund. Raiola played bidding clubs off against each other, planning his ultimate payday, though he claimed to care about money only as the scorecard of success.
在他最後的幾個月裏，他正在談判足球界最大的一筆轉會——挪威射手埃林·布勞特·哈蘭德(Erling Braut Haaland)從多特蒙德轉會。拉伊奧拉讓各大競標俱樂部相互競爭，計劃著他的最終發薪日，儘管他聲稱錢只是成功的計分卡。
His death from pulmonary disease was prematurely announced twice, allowing him to read his first obituaries from his Milan hospital bed. On Friday, his Twitter account grumbled: “Current health status for the ones wondering: pissed off second time in 4 months they kill me.” He leaves a wife, two sons, and the unfinished Haaland deal.
他死於肺部疾病的訊息兩次被提前宣佈，這讓他得以在米蘭醫院的病牀上讀到他的第一個訃告。上週五，他的Twitter賬戶抱怨道：「向關心的人通報一下我目前的健康狀況：生氣，因爲4個月來他們第二次殺了我。」他身後留下了妻子和兩個兒子，還有未完成的哈蘭德交易。