华尔街中级英语学习教程第5课：沟通与交流Act4 (MP3和文本下载)

ROWLAND: John - you are a professional broadcaster and journalist and you're also very keen on football. When did that interest start?

JOHN: As a small boy. And I think you'll find this is a common story all over the world, not just in England. Uh, my dad took me to a football match. And I can remember being lifted over the turnstiles. So, in other words, I was so small that the man on the gate didn't want me to pay, or my dad to pay, so I was lifted over the turnstiles and taken into the stand. So, right from that point onwards I was hooked really.

ROWLAND: And you used to play...What position did you play?

JOHN: I was a winger, a right-winger. I was on the right wing. But you see today all those expressions have now gone. You're either a striker, or a mid-fielder, or a backfour. But in those days I was an outside right.

ROWLAND: You mentioned memories of how the game used to be played and you've talked about how the game is played today. What are the differences?

JOHN: Amateur football, I don't think has changed all that much. The professional game clearly has changed and that's what I'm concerned with today. In other words, the game that I used to see as a schoolboy when taken over the turnstile and sitting in the stands, that's changed enormously. In those days of course players weren't paid very much money. We didn't pay very much money to go in to the game. Er, but now of course players as we all know are paid enormous fees. And to get into the ground you have to pay a lot of money. And, for example, a programme today at any English football league match will probably cost you about one pound fifty. One pound fifty would have given you a centre stand seat in those early days when I was a schoolboy. So things have changed. And it's largely in the professional game. A financial change, I would say.

ROWLAND: Clubs buy and sell players, and on the strength of the players they buy and sell they either become a better club or indeed they get worse. Do you agree with the way money dictates how good a club can be?

JOHN: No. I don't. I don't like the way that money dictates football today. What I object to are the really big clubs. And this is not only confined to England but it's throughout Europe of course where simply a very, very rich man and fellow directors pour money into the club and say to the manager, go out and buy whoever you like. Now that to me is not what it's all about. Sadly it's the way that football, top football, is going today. So the rich clubs are getting richer and the poor clubs not only are getting poorer but many of them are having to go out of the game altogether.

ROWLAND: Does all of this affect the game as a spectator sport? How it looks? Do you think that's changed at all?

JOHN: Yes. I do, again. Because today particularly in what we now call the Premier League, that was the First Division. By and large the important thing now is to stay in that division and to survive effectively at any cost. Literally at any cost. That means that you've got to win. And to me, it may be perhaps an old-fashioned view but sport is not about necessarily winning but it's competing and if you lose occasionally that's something that you must accommodate. Today winning is crucial. Winning by one goal is all that matters and so much of the flair and creativity has gone because there is so much at stake. And that has definitely affected the game for the worse.

JOHN: If you're playing a top club then the training is going to be very intense. The manager or the coach will have observed the other team. Come back with lots of notes and there'll be lots of little plans about how to counter that man, this man, their long ball approach, in other words, technique, tactics. And that's what the whole thing will be about.

ROWLAND: Looking at the players for a moment, they seem to start very, very young. They become professional almost when they’ve left school, don’t they?

JOHN: They do in fact, yes. And most clubs will tell you that the young players are the most important players because they are the future of the game, the potential is there, so if you can get them at the age of 13, 14 or 15 then you can mould them into the game you want to play. Whether it’s the game they want to play is a another matter, because again I go back to the point to the point that winning is all important and so much of that creative flair that you saw in the early days, in the forties and fifties, has gone. And I think that’s very sad indeed.

ROWLAND: What does a footballer do when he retires? Because they retire very young, maybe before they're 30 years old?

JOHN: In the past many of them chose to stay in the game perhaps on the training side, the coaching side. There are courses that they can go on. That is not quite so true today. Largely because of the nature of the game and also because I think players see the way the game is going and decide, no there's no way that I want to be part of management in football today. I wouldn't want to be a manager. And they often point to their own manager jokingly saying, I wouldn't want to be like him and have his problems. So a lot of them leave the game and many of them end up running pubs. That's a popular pastime for footballers, running pubs. And also many of them use their sporting ability and work for sports organisations selling shoes, or sporting equipment, or associating with golf clubs and things like that. Many of them try to stay within sport but not necessarily football.

ROWLAND: Football of course is a team game isn't it? However, what we tend to hear about all the time are the individuals the soccer stars, our heroes on the football field. Is it difficult for a football player to learn not to be a personality but to be part of a team do you think?

JOHN: It is. Yes. That's a very good question and one that many clubs have never totally resolved. Obviously managers want to encourage the individuals but they also know that if they're going get those results that I spoke about earlier, in other words, if they're going to win the game it's got to be a team effort.

ROWLAND: And teams of course have different ways of playing, a different style of approaching the game. Sometimes England, especially in World Cup competition, have been called a bit pedantic, a bit slow, a bit stodgy in the way they play football, whereas other teams play with more energy and flair. Do you think that's fair?

JOHN: Very often the English approach appears to be as you put it pedantic and rather slow and certainly the club that I follow has that same approach. Their tactic is simply the goalkeeper gets the ball and he punts it high up into the other half and they hope that somebody will be underneath it from our side who'll be able to control that ball, sweep it out to the wing, the winger sweeps it back in again and bang, it's in the net. That's the theory, but in practice it doesn't work out that way and the trouble is that spectators do get a bit fed up with one type of football.

ROWLAND: Finally, John, you obviously love the game of football and as a professional commentator you've been looking at the game for some years now. What do you think the future holds for English football?

JOHN: I'm very concerned about the future and I think most people associated with football are concerned with the future of English football, or football in general. Largely for the reasons I've stated. The big money is entering the field. The television companies are entering the field, literally. The spectators are not being given enough attention and consideration. It's becoming less of a sport and more of a business and that concerns me very much indeed.