There was a minute to go before midnight on deadline day, clock running, when the paperwork finally arrived and Barcelona at last knew they could register Pierre‑Emerick Aubameyang, somehow securing a fourth January signing. Six weeks later, he scored twice and gave an assist for Ferran Torres, another winter arrival, in a 4-0 destruction of Real Madrid at the Santiago Bernabéu. It was Aubameyang’s ninth goal since joining, Barcelona’s 12th game without defeat, a new start. A job well done, indeed.

It is not an easy job, one where decisions have to be made that can “break your heart”, and still less in the midst of a crisis such as the one Barcelona must fix; it is also a job Cruyff has occupied only since 1 September when he became sporting adviser, later named director of international football, now effectively de facto technical secretary, working alongside Xavi Hernández and the director of football, Mateu Alemany, on transfers. But the preparation goes back further – he has been player, coach, sporting director – and so does the inspiration.

He talks eloquently about learning from Sir Alex Ferguson, a man “ahead of his time”, “ruthless” but “humane”, even if he didn’t always realise those were lessons then. And his father Johan, who died six years ago on Thursday and would have been 75 this year, was the most influential figure football has seen. A legacy is left through Cruyff’s foundation, celebrating its quarter-century, and in just about everything else. Nowhere is it felt more than here; no one feels it more than him.

Johan built the modern Barcelona, now Jordi is helping rebuild it. The task is huge. Lionel Messi has gone, the club unable to pay him or others; the debt revealed as €1.35bn in August, with further loans taken since; players have had to take pay cuts, and when the league recently announced salary limits Barcelona’s was set at minus €144m – the only club in negative numbers. There is, in short, no money. So, let’s cut to the chase: how could they sign Ferran Torres for €55m? And add Dani Alaves, Adama Traoré and Aubameyang?

Ferran Torres after scoring the third goal in Barcelona’s 4-0 demolition of Real Madrid. Photograph: Gonzalo Arroyo Moreno/Getty Images

“The word is amortisations,” Cruyff says. “You divide the cost by x years and work from there.” How it all works is complex; long-, mid-, short- and ultra-short-term plans running in parallel, a balance sought between building up the team and bringing down the debt. Imagination is required, opportunities seized: Barcelona’s winter signings were a transfer, a loan and a free agent, liberated at the last minute as the only way out. The fourth, Alves, was a 38‑year‑old with no club, desperate to come home – and make the World Cup.

“Spain’s financial fair play rules and the economic problems means many things that would normally be possible are not now,” Cruyff says. Those rules mean Barcelona can invest only one euro for every four they can save; they are also, Cruyff says, “much tougher than in the rest of Europe, which is curious. In England they’re more flexible. In Spain you get blocked. You need to be creative”.

He adds: “The mechanism is complex, and new to me, but Mateu understands it well. It’s so important to have a good team, direct communication: honest and clear, all together. Sometimes you come up with a [football] solution and it can’t be done. A difficult season sees you suffer but also helps you see clearly, to create priorities: there might be positions you want to strengthen but what do you need for these four months? What do you need is only part of it; what can you realistically get? Hopes are not always fulfilled, targets get dropped, plans abandoned, others replacing them.

“Knowing the economic situation, FFP limits, players have to want to come. They know they could earn more elsewhere and all four signings made an effort so we can make the numbers work, which we should recognise. Barcelona is still special, a club players are prepared to lose money to work at.”

Alves came on the minimum salary permitted by La Liga. Aubameyang posed a simple deadline-day equation: if that’s all you can pay, that’s all I will earn. Which isn’t to say it was easy, a deal that was dead in the afternoon later rethought, restructured and revived. Rather than a transfer or loan Aubameyang had to rescind his contract at Arsenal.

Jordi Cruyff (left) welcomes Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang to Barcelona in January. Photograph: Enric Fontcuberta/EPA

“Depending on third parties on the last day is hard,” Cruyff says. “A termination agreement is also a lot more complicated than a loan agreement when you can say: ‘Well, we’ll sort things out in June, July.’ You’re waiting, there is a nervousness, the window’s closing, you can’t look for alternatives. Everyone’s after a goalscorer. But destiny decided and we’re delighted. There’s a collective sigh of relief when it ends well.

“Ferran is short-, mid- and long-term, and an opportunity. Had he not had the injury it would have been very hard to sign him. He would have played and he scores goals, so they [Manchester City] wouldn’t have sold. Sometimes you see a market opportunity. He’s injured, his team is winning [without him]; that creates a situation which doesn’t always come off, but this time it did.

“The winter market is difficult because clubs aren’t going to loan you a regular starter. So, you have players who are not playing so much but the Premier League is such a high tempo, more physically intense, that the player who has been there a few years has acquired certain habits, conditions. It’s not that we wouldn’t have looked at a good player from another league, but it was safer from England because you know they have the intensity built in. It wasn’t the key but it was a useful bonus.”

Within three games in Spain, Traoré had been involved in as many goals as in the previous 25 in England. Heading the other way, meanwhile, Philippe Coutinho has scored as many league goals in 10 Aston Villa games as in the past two seasons at Barcelona. “It can happen and it’s nobody’s fault,” Cruyff says; it pleases him too and not just because of their strategic aims – Barcelona need a market for Coutinho – but something simpler. “Karma,” he says. “If you wish someone ill, it comes back.”

There had been suggestions that Cruyff might temporarily take the team after the sacking of Ronald Koeman. Instead, Sergi Barjuán was made interim until Xavi arrived. Things have improved dramatically under the coach, with whom Cruyff has worked closely.

“I’ve been player, coach, sporting director – footballer is the loveliest thing of all – and don’t know what role I’ll do in 10 years’ time but what I do know is I never mix: when I’m here, I’m here. Sit in someone else’s chair? No. That’s rule number one. And rule number two, three, four, and five. What does help is that you can visualise a target, an XI, as a coach. You might think: ‘He’s a good player, but not what we need now.’ It helps to discuss things with coaches in their own language. That doesn’t necessarily mean you’re going to get it right, but it helps you better understand the player, the coach and his needs.”

The winter window has to be judged a success, Barcelona are unbeaten since deadline day, even if he stresses that it’s not just about the new four. Sergio Busquets, Gerard Piqué and Jordi Alba offer proof of that, Cruyff suggesting that people blaming the veterans is “the easy thing”, adding: “The coach deserves credit: the new players have raised the level, brought new energy, but everyone is better. There has to be a balance.”

Balance is the word. The financial constraints remain, an inescapable reality. They must fix the crisis at the same time as finding ways through financial fair play to facilitate the reconstruction of the team, aware that the risk of deepening the debt remains. There is a moment when Cruyff talks about inherited amortisations, signings from before proving a burden now, which poses a question: might not signings now be a problem later? What if a short-term fix becomes a long-term obligation?

“Now, it is being controlled so it doesn’t rebound on us,” he says. “Salaries have to be controlled too, a wage structure. That’s the way it has to be, or you get a boomerang effect.”

So far it is working, but they are under no illusions. There is a long way to go, but there is an idea, a pathway. Joan Laporta has always held Johan Cruyff up as a spiritual guide, asking himself what he would say, and Jordi admits he is the same, growing up seeing his father’s capacity to predict what was coming. So, what would Johan say now? “What exactly he would say about the situation, I’ll keep to myself,” Cruyff says, laughing. “But he was positive at all times and in everything. I was always amazed by it: even in the hardest moments of his life, he was an optimist.”

There was a minute to go before midnight on deadline day, clock running, when the paperwork finally arrived and Barcelona at last knew they could register Pierre‑Emerick Aubameyang, somehow securing a fourth January signing. Six weeks later, he scored twice and gave an assist for Ferran Torres, another winter arrival, in a 4-0 destruction of Real Madrid at the Santiago Bernabéu. It was Aubameyang’s ninth goal since joining, Barcelona’s 12th game without defeat, a new start. A job well done, indeed.

It is not an easy job, one where decisions have to be made that can “break your heart”, and still less in the midst of a crisis such as the one Barcelona must fix; it is also a job Cruyff has occupied only since 1 September when he became sporting adviser, later named director of international football, now effectively de facto technical secretary, working alongside Xavi Hernández and the director of football, Mateu Alemany, on transfers. But the preparation goes back further – he has been player, coach, sporting director – and so does the inspiration.

He talks eloquently about learning from Sir Alex Ferguson, a man “ahead of his time”, “ruthless” but “humane”, even if he didn’t always realise those were lessons then. And his father Johan, who died six years ago on Thursday and would have been 75 this year, was the most influential figure football has seen. A legacy is left through Cruyff’s foundation, celebrating its quarter-century, and in just about everything else. Nowhere is it felt more than here; no one feels it more than him.

Johan built the modern Barcelona, now Jordi is helping rebuild it. The task is huge. Lionel Messi has gone, the club unable to pay him or others; the debt revealed as €1.35bn in August, with further loans taken since; players have had to take pay cuts, and when the league recently announced salary limits Barcelona’s was set at minus €144m – the only club in negative numbers. There is, in short, no money. So, let’s cut to the chase: how could they sign Ferran Torres for €55m? And add Dani Alaves, Adama Traoré and Aubameyang?

Ferran Torres after scoring the third goal in Barcelona’s 4-0 demolition of Real Madrid. Photograph: Gonzalo Arroyo Moreno/Getty Images

“The word is amortisations,” Cruyff says. “You divide the cost by x years and work from there.” How it all works is complex; long-, mid-, short- and ultra-short-term plans running in parallel, a balance sought between building up the team and bringing down the debt. Imagination is required, opportunities seized: Barcelona’s winter signings were a transfer, a loan and a free agent, liberated at the last minute as the only way out. The fourth, Alves, was a 38‑year‑old with no club, desperate to come home – and make the World Cup.

“Spain’s financial fair play rules and the economic problems means many things that would normally be possible are not now,” Cruyff says. Those rules mean Barcelona can invest only one euro for every four they can save; they are also, Cruyff says, “much tougher than in the rest of Europe, which is curious. In England they’re more flexible. In Spain you get blocked. You need to be creative”.

He adds: “The mechanism is complex, and new to me, but Mateu understands it well. It’s so important to have a good team, direct communication: honest and clear, all together. Sometimes you come up with a [football] solution and it can’t be done. A difficult season sees you suffer but also helps you see clearly, to create priorities: there might be positions you want to strengthen but what do you need for these four months? What do you need is only part of it; what can you realistically get? Hopes are not always fulfilled, targets get dropped, plans abandoned, others replacing them.

“Knowing the economic situation, FFP limits, players have to want to come. They know they could earn more elsewhere and all four signings made an effort so we can make the numbers work, which we should recognise. Barcelona is still special, a club players are prepared to lose money to work at.”

Alves came on the minimum salary permitted by La Liga. Aubameyang posed a simple deadline-day equation: if that’s all you can pay, that’s all I will earn. Which isn’t to say it was easy, a deal that was dead in the afternoon later rethought, restructured and revived. Rather than a transfer or loan Aubameyang had to rescind his contract at Arsenal.

Jordi Cruyff (left) welcomes Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang to Barcelona in January. Photograph: Enric Fontcuberta/EPA

“Depending on third parties on the last day is hard,” Cruyff says. “A termination agreement is also a lot more complicated than a loan agreement when you can say: ‘Well, we’ll sort things out in June, July.’ You’re waiting, there is a nervousness, the window’s closing, you can’t look for alternatives. Everyone’s after a goalscorer. But destiny decided and we’re delighted. There’s a collective sigh of relief when it ends well.

“Ferran is short-, mid- and long-term, and an opportunity. Had he not had the injury it would have been very hard to sign him. He would have played and he scores goals, so they [Manchester City] wouldn’t have sold. Sometimes you see a market opportunity. He’s injured, his team is winning [without him]; that creates a situation which doesn’t always come off, but this time it did.

“The winter market is difficult because clubs aren’t going to loan you a regular starter. So, you have players who are not playing so much but the Premier League is such a high tempo, more physically intense, that the player who has been there a few years has acquired certain habits, conditions. It’s not that we wouldn’t have looked at a good player from another league, but it was safer from England because you know they have the intensity built in. It wasn’t the key but it was a useful bonus.”

Within three games in Spain, Traoré had been involved in as many goals as in the previous 25 in England. Heading the other way, meanwhile, Philippe Coutinho has scored as many league goals in 10 Aston Villa games as in the past two seasons at Barcelona. “It can happen and it’s nobody’s fault,” Cruyff says; it pleases him too and not just because of their strategic aims – Barcelona need a market for Coutinho – but something simpler. “Karma,” he says. “If you wish someone ill, it comes back.”

There had been suggestions that Cruyff might temporarily take the team after the sacking of Ronald Koeman. Instead, Sergi Barjuán was made interim until Xavi arrived. Things have improved dramatically under the coach, with whom Cruyff has worked closely.

“I’ve been player, coach, sporting director – footballer is the loveliest thing of all – and don’t know what role I’ll do in 10 years’ time but what I do know is I never mix: when I’m here, I’m here. Sit in someone else’s chair? No. That’s rule number one. And rule number two, three, four, and five. What does help is that you can visualise a target, an XI, as a coach. You might think: ‘He’s a good player, but not what we need now.’ It helps to discuss things with coaches in their own language. That doesn’t necessarily mean you’re going to get it right, but it helps you better understand the player, the coach and his needs.”

The winter window has to be judged a success, Barcelona are unbeaten since deadline day, even if he stresses that it’s not just about the new four. Sergio Busquets, Gerard Piqué and Jordi Alba offer proof of that, Cruyff suggesting that people blaming the veterans is “the easy thing”, adding: “The coach deserves credit: the new players have raised the level, brought new energy, but everyone is better. There has to be a balance.”

Balance is the word. The financial constraints remain, an inescapable reality. They must fix the crisis at the same time as finding ways through financial fair play to facilitate the reconstruction of the team, aware that the risk of deepening the debt remains. There is a moment when Cruyff talks about inherited amortisations, signings from before proving a burden now, which poses a question: might not signings now be a problem later? What if a short-term fix becomes a long-term obligation?

“Now, it is being controlled so it doesn’t rebound on us,” he says. “Salaries have to be controlled too, a wage structure. That’s the way it has to be, or you get a boomerang effect.”

So far it is working, but they are under no illusions. There is a long way to go, but there is an idea, a pathway. Joan Laporta has always held Johan Cruyff up as a spiritual guide, asking himself what he would say, and Jordi admits he is the same, growing up seeing his father’s capacity to predict what was coming. So, what would Johan say now? “What exactly he would say about the situation, I’ll keep to myself,” Cruyff says, laughing. “But he was positive at all times and in everything. I was always amazed by it: even in the hardest moments of his life, he was an optimist.”

Resolving the future of Mohamed Salah and Sadio Mane, whose contracts both expire in June 2023, is a huge issue Liverpool must address over the coming months. If they lose either player this summer, it will be a major blow to the club's ambitions. Beyond keeping their best players, Liverpool also need to look to the future and find a way to support, and eventually replace, those players who have served them so well.

In midfield, Jordan Henderson and Thiago Alcantara are both in their 30s and beginning to miss an increasing number of games due to injury. At the back, Virgil van Dijk and Joe Gomez have yet to come close to their best form since suffering long-term knee injuries last season. Where City have a proven replacement for all of their players (with the possible exception of goalkeeper Ederson), Liverpool still have too great a drop between the quality of their first-choice and the back-up players behind them.

Resolving that will be crucial for Liverpool's title hopes. Otherwise, they'll be expecting too much of the likes of Salah, Mane, Van Dijk, Andy Robertson and Trent Alexander-Arnold to avoid injury or loss of form for an entire season.

This Liverpool team is still the best of the rest and, if the top players stay fit, can still pose a serious threat to City next season. But question marks remain over the depth.

冬眠不仅仅是睡眠，而是一种沉睡。动物的体温降到刚好在零摄氏度以上，心脏跳动非常缓慢。人们看到处于冬眠状态的动物，常常以为它们是死的：身体摸上去冰凉，可能每5分钟才呼吸一次。冬眠的动物感觉不到任何疼痛。你可以摸它，拉它的尾巴，也不能使它动一动或醒过来。当它处于冬眠状态时，甚至可以长时间地生活在有毒空气中而无任何不良后果。

Hibernating in this way, the animal can sleep all through the winter. You might wonder how it manages to live without eating for so many months. The answer lies in two facts. Thefirst is that it has stored supplies of fat in its body during the summer and autumn. The second is connected with the main use the body makes of food -- to supply the energy for movement. We have seen that hibernating animal reduces movement to far below the ordinary level. Even the movements of the heart and lungs are greatly reduced. The animal hardly makes any movement, hardly use any energy, and hardly needs any food.

用这样的方式越冬，动物可以睡过整个冬天。你或许会觉得奇怪，它好几个月不吃东西，怎么活过来的呢?可以从两方面的事实中得到答案。第一，在夏秋季节，动物体内储存大量的脂肪。第二是与食物对身体的主要用途，即食物供给身体活动所需的能量有关。我们已经知道，冬眠的动物把活动量减少到大大低于一般的水平。甚至心肺的活动量也大大减少了。冬眠的动物几乎没有什么活动，几乎也不消耗什么能量。因此它也几乎不需要什么食物。

Some animals, including some bears only half hibernate.That is to say, they sleep during the winter, but their sleep is not deep and their body temperature does not drop, as they are warm-blooded animals. In the antumn the bear eats and eats and becomes very fat. His hair grows longer. Soon he has a thick covering of fat and fur. In November he finds a place to lie down and goes to sleep. On warm winter days he may think spring has arrived； he gets up and walks around. When he sees that the snow is still thick on the ground, he quickly goes to sleep again.

有些动物，包括有些熊，只是半冬眠。就是说，每到冬天它就睡觉，不过他们睡得不那么沉，因为他们属温血运动，所以体温不下降。在秋天，熊吃了又吃长得真是肥极了。它身上的毛也长得更长了，很快全身就包满了一层厚厚的脂肪和毛。到了11月，它找个地方躺下睡觉了。在冬天暖和的日子里，它可能以为春天已经来到了，便起来四处走走，当它看到地上积雪仍然很厚时，它很快又去睡了。

地球上生命的历史一直就是一部生物与其环境相互作用的历史。在很大程度上，地球上动植物的形态以及习性都是由外部环境所塑造的。考虑到地球上生命存在的整个时间，相反作用——即生命对其周围环境的实际改变作用一却相对很小。只有在当前这个世纪才有一个物种——人类，获得了强大的力量，改变了其所生存的世界的自然状态。

During the past quarter century this power has not only become increasingly great but it has changed in character.The most alarming of all man's assaults upon the environment is the contaminatien of air, earth, rivers, and sea with dangerous and even lethal materials. This pollution is for the most part irrecoverable. In this now universal contamination of the environment, chemicals are the sinister partners of radiation in changing the very nature of the world, the very nature of it's life.

在过去的l／4世纪中，这种力量不仅日趋强大，而且其性质也发生了变化。在人类破坏环境的种种行为中，最令人担忧的是人类向大气、土壤、河流以及海洋中排放危险甚至致命物质，而当今这种污染在很大程度上是无法挽救的。在当今这种对环境的普遍污染中，化学制品与辐射狼狈为奸，改变着地球的自然状态，也就是改变着地球上生命自然状态。

It took hundreds of millions of years to produce the life that now inhabits the earth. Given time not in years but in millennia life adjusts, and a balance has been reached. But in the modern world there is no time.

地球历经了许多亿年才创造了栖息其上的生命。经过了一定时间——不是以若干年计算而是以上千年计算的时间——生命开始适应环境，并形成了一种与环境的平衡。但是在当今世界，时间这一因素已经没有了。

It is not my contention that chemical insecticides must never be used. I do contend that we have put poisonous and biologically potent chemicals indiscriminately into the hands of persons largely or wholly ignorant of their potentials for harm. We have subjected enormous numbers of people to contact with these poisons, without their consent and often without their knowledge. I contend,furthermore, that we have allowed these chemicals to be used with little or no advance investigation of their effect on soil, water, wildlife, and man himself. Future generations are unlikely to forgive our lack of concern for the integrity of the natural world that supports all life.

我不是说人类决不能使用化学杀虫剂。我要说的是，我们不分青红皂白地将这些有毒的、具有强大生物功能的化学制品，交给了那些对这些制品的潜在危害基本上或者完全无知的人去使用。我们使众多的人接触这些有毒物质，却没有征得他们的同意，并常常将他们蒙在鼓中、我还要说的一点是，我们允许使用这些化学制品，却事先很少或者根本没有调查它们对土壤、水、野生生物以及人类自身造成的影响。我们缺乏对万物赖以生存的自然界生态统一的关心，对此，我们的后代是不可能原谅的。

新千年的前50年对世界人口来说是至关重要的，到2050年，世界人口将趋于平稳，但到那时，世界人口将达到100亿，比现在多2／3。但人D增长率是我们现在能选择的事：它不是顺应天意而产生的，而是人类的选择。这一选择相当复杂，有许多因素，但它依然是一种选择。

If we want to prevent a population explosion, we should take action now -or assist the poorer countries to do so. They need better government, better institutions, better labor and capital markets, better schools. Anything that increases the value of women's time and adds to the cost of caring for a child makes a woman less likely to have that child. Since big families are often seen as safety nets for illness and old age, improving poor people's access to insurance, pensions and welfare institutions also has a major impact. This can be as simple as rural credit, providing a means of saving. Finally, there is education--both for women and, perhaps even more important, for the next generation of children.

要想避免人口爆炸，我们现在就应采取行动——或者说应帮助比较穷的国家来控制人口，因为他们需要更好的政府、机构、劳动力及资本市场和学校。任何使一个妇女增加抚养孩子的时间或抚养孩子费用的事都使得那个妇女不太想要这个孩子。由于大家庭经常被认为是年老生病时的安全网，让穷人进一步获得保险、退休金和福利机构的帮助也会在控制人口生育上起重大作用。这可以像农村信用制度那样简单，为人们提供一种储蓄的手段。最后还有教育问题——既有对妇女的教育，也有更重要的对下一代的教育。

These steps are there to be taken, but there appear to be some countries that are not seriously trying at the moment. If we cannot achieve that we will certainly not control population.

以上这些都是应采取的措施，但看来有些国家目前并没有认真去做，如果我们不能做到这一点，我们就不能控制人口。

That said, I don't feel pessimistic that we are going to run out of resources: we are becoming more efficient at producing food faster than the rate at which population is increasing. There is, however, a risk that we will wreck the environment so effectively that the world will no longer be an attractive place to live. That really would be a dismal outcome, to reach world population equilibrium only to find we'd destroyed the natural environment in the process.

及此，我对我们资源殆尽并不悲观：我们生产粮食的速度超过了人口增长的速度。然而，我们也存在这样的危险：我们会彻底毁坏环境，以致于地球将不再是一个吸引人居住的地方。那确实是一个可悲的结果：实现了人口的平衡却换来了自然环境的破坏。