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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.
他曾经说，“我不在市场上交易，我就是市场。”享年54岁的荷兰-意大利足球经纪人米诺•拉伊奥拉(Mino Raiola)体现了经纪人在现代足球中的崛起。
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.
他出生于意大利南部的贫穷家庭，在荷兰长大。他的父母是工作狂，移民到荷兰后在那里建立了一家披萨连锁店。拉伊奥拉把他的家庭比作《教父》电影里的考利昂家族，只不过没有暴力。他的父母教给他一种服务伦理：他们的披萨店是他们家的延伸，每个顾客都应该被当作家人对待，如果你打扫了餐厅的厕所，人们会回来。
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.
他把这种道德观带入了足球。他是一名天生的商人，19岁时在小城市哈勒姆买卖麦当劳后成为百万富翁，他开始利用自己的语言技能将荷兰足球运动员带到父母的祖国。
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.
在痴迷于外表的足球行业，他总是穿着邋遢。“我又矮又胖，”他曾经这样解释。“很长一段时间，人们低估了我。他们说，‘他甚至不能穿正常的衣服。’这就是我的机会。”他的突破出现在1996年，当时他发掘了捷克球员“铁人”帕维尔·内德维德(Pavel Nedved)，不消多时，内德维德成为世界级的球星。时机恰到好处。欧洲法院新的博斯曼裁决允许合同到期的球员在不收取转会费的情况下在欧盟范围内转会。与此同时，从电视上赚来的钱正涌入足球市场。球员需要信任的顾问。
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.”
拉伊奥拉为自己为数不多的客户感到自豪，这让他能够为每一个人提供热情的个人服务，就像他们是当年家里的餐厅的顾客一样。前荷兰后卫罗迪•特尔平(Rody Turpijn)回忆起在咖啡厅露台上谈了几个小时的生活：“感觉他就像家人一样。他总是有空的。”
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.
一些球员每天给拉伊奥拉打两次电话，但当马里奥·巴洛特利(Mario Balotelli)报告他的房子着火时，拉伊奥拉建议他去找消防队。拉伊奥拉通过公开斥责俱乐部和教练来表达他对球员的忠诚，尤其是他最喜欢的敌人，现任曼城主帅瓜迪奥拉(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.”
他敦促他的球员像内德维德一样努力，内德维德把他在俱乐部的训练当作开胃菜，之后在他的花园里更努力地加练。这就是拉伊奥拉的职业道德：“休息不是我职业的一部分。”
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，即使是一个低级别球员的小金额转会也可能改变一个人的生活。虽然其他经纪人的目标是与俱乐部保持良好关系，但拉伊奥拉是一个强硬的谈判代表，乐于离开谈判桌，或者谎报球员目前的工资。他通常不会庆祝交易，而是担心如果他推动交易，俱乐部本可能会付出更多。
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”.
由于担心他的球员有挥霍钱财的倾向，他敦促他们只投资“砖块”，也就是房产，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?”
他认为自己是最好的经纪人，但不是最好的父亲。他估计自己每年有30天是在摩纳哥的家中度过的，其余的时间则是去看望他心爱的球员。当他的妻子抱怨说：“你有两个正式的孩子和大量非正式的孩子，”他开玩笑说："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.
他穿梭于欧洲各地，用七种语言与俱乐部高管交谈，听取他们的计划，预测转会市场的变化。十年前，他很早就意识到意大利俱乐部的资金正在耗尽，而巴黎圣日耳曼正走向统治地位。他力劝自己的客户兹拉坦·伊布拉希莫维奇(Zlatan Ibrahimovic)从米兰搬到巴黎。伊布上周看望了他“最好的朋友”拉伊奥拉，送了他最后一程。
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.
与其等待俱乐部的报价，拉伊奥拉决定他的球员应该去哪里，然后让它发生。2016年，他策划了保罗·博格巴(Paul Pogba)从尤文图斯转会到曼联。1.05亿欧元的转会费创下了世界纪录，而拉伊奥拉估计赚了4800万欧元，他设法从俱乐部和博格巴两方获得转会费，这与他声称只为自己的球员工作的说法不符。
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.
然后，他利用曼联薄弱的领导力，又向俱乐部出售了几个他的客户--俱乐部现在可能会后悔。他经常把自己的成功归功于这个行业的愚蠢。他曾开玩笑说：“其他经纪人甚至比我还笨。”
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.
他的雄心壮志包括成为国际足联主席，改革足球的全球权威；以“开明的独裁者”的身份管理意大利(并将该国分裂为南北两派)；转行进行并购，收购一家足球俱乐部。他说，他对女王公园巡游者的收购之所以失败，只是因为那个让他们晋级英超的进球。
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.
在他最后的几个月里，他正在谈判足球界最大的一笔转会——挪威射手埃林·布劳特·哈兰德(Erling Braut Haaland)从多特蒙德转会。拉伊奥拉让各大竞标俱乐部相互竞争，计划着他的最终发薪日，尽管他声称钱只是成功的计分卡。
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.
他死于肺部疾病的消息两次被提前宣布，这让他得以在米兰医院的病床上读到他的第一个讣告。上周五，他的Twitter账户抱怨道：“向关心的人通报一下我目前的健康状况：生气，因为4个月来他们第二次杀了我。”他身后留下了妻子和两个儿子，还有未完成的哈兰德交易。