This was the World Cup the French would rather forget. The Blues returned without a single goal to their credit—an ignominious f

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问题     This was the World Cup the French would rather forget. The Blues returned without a single goal to their credit—an ignominious first for a defending champion. " Twisted and blinded by success and money," ran a typical editorial in Le Figaro , "the players and those around them neglected the most important thing: the football field. " The charge is a familiar one across Europe, where most of the sport’s superstars play for salaries that have an obscene number of zeros in them. The worry, however, is less that footballers are becoming too spoiled to play well than their teams are driving themselves to financial ruin.
    Each of the official footballing nations has its own specific problems, but the bottom line for many clubs is the same. "The increase in expenditure has simply exceeded the increase in revenue," says Thomas Kurth of G14, the loose association that groups Europe’s top clubs. Real Madrid had fallen $382 million into debt before selling off its training ground to developers last year.
    The scale of debts is tough to square with massive uptick in revenues the sport as a whole has enjoyed over the past decade. Rupert Murdoch set the ball rolling in 1992 when he outbid the BBC for the rights to show live matches of England’s Premier League on his BSkyB satellite channel. Competition intensified as other TV magnates quickly recognized the game’s potential as a means of pushing their new pay channels.
    Obviously club owners are the ones handing out the outlandish paychecks. "You can have highly talented businessmen who have run their own companies with huge success. But when the door shuts behind them at a club they become someone else," says Jean-Paul de la Fuente of Media Content, a sports-rights consultancy. These bosses are typically spared the more rigorous disciplines of the marketplace, including angry shareholders and stingy banks. Says Oliver Butler of Research Service Soccer Investor: "The financial authorities don’t regulate clubs as if they were limited companies—and the banks don’t want to be firebombed by the fans. "
    To avert ruin, however, clubs must learn the dreary business of cost control. One idea being discussed is to limit the team salary caps. Any form of compulsory cap, though, might fall afoul of EU anti-competition rules. Besides, such regulations won’t be welcome to the select band of clubs—mostly from the Premier League—that have already learned to balance their books and live by orthodox business codes. Other teams could learn a thing or two about winning from them.
According to the passage, the common problem of many football clubs is that

选项 A、they neglected the most important thing—the football field.
B、the increase in expenditure has exceeded the increase in revenue.
C、they pay too much to lure superstars from other teams.
D、they are increasingly dependent on advertising.

答案B

解析 根据本文,很多足球俱乐部共有的问题是[A]忽视了最重要的东西——足球场。[B]开销的增长已经超过了收入的增长。[C]为吸引其他球队的超级明星开销过高。[D]越来越依赖广告。文章第二段第一句话指出,许多俱乐部的基本问题都是一样的。然后借用托马斯·库尔思的话说出了这一问题,即“开销的增长已经超过了收人的增长。”所以,本题的正确答案为[B]。
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