China jails former soccer coach Li Tie for corruption

The previous coach of the Chinese language males’s nationwide soccer workforce has been sentenced to twenty years in jail for corruption, state media reported.

Li Tie, who additionally performed for Everton within the English Premier League, admitted earlier this 12 months to fixing matches, taking bribes and providing bribes to get the highest teaching job .

The case exhibits how President Xi Jinping’s anti-corruption crackdown has broken sports activities, the banking sector and the navy.

Earlier this week, three former Chinese language Soccer Affiliation (CFA) officers had been additionally sentenced to jail phrases for corruption. Greater than a dozen coaches and gamers had been investigated.

Li, who served as head coach of the nationwide workforce from January 2020 to December 2021, pleaded responsible in March to accepting greater than $16 million in bribes.

The court docket mentioned this occurred from 2015, when he was an assistant coach at Hebei China Fortune Membership, till 2021, when he left his place as nationwide coach.

In change for bribes, Li would choose sure folks for the nationwide workforce and assist soccer golf equipment win competitions.

The 47-year-old was featured in an anti-corruption documentary broadcast by Chinese language state broadcaster CCTV earlier this 12 months, wherein he apologized for his offenses.

“I am actually sorry. I ought to have stored my head down and adopted the suitable path,” he mentioned. “There have been sure issues that, on the time, had been customary observe in soccer.”

Li made 92 appearances for China and appeared on the 2002 World Cup – the nation’s solely finals look to date.

His former boss, former CFA president Chen Xuyuanwas sentenced to life in jail earlier this 12 months for accepting bribes value $11 million.

Xi has beforehand expressed his ambition to make China a serious soccer energy.

In 2011, he spoke of his “three needs” for Chinese language soccer: to qualify for the World Cup once more, host the match and at some point win the trophy.

However the current detentions and convictions of main soccer figures – a few of whom had been officers accountable for main the soccer revolution – have dealt an additional setback to the nation’s soccer ambitions.

This newest anti-corruption marketing campaign echoes a earlier crackdown on Chinese language soccer in 2010, when a number of officers, nationwide workforce gamers and referees had been jailed for corruption.

This initiative was additionally led by Xi, who was then vice chairman of China.

Rowan Simons, creator of the guide Bamboo Goalposts, about his long-term efforts to develop grassroots soccer in China, advised BBC Chinese language earlier this 12 months: “In some ways, [the current campaign] is precisely the identical because it was 10 years in the past with a distinct set of characters.

“How is that this totally different? There’s much more cash concerned.”

Extra reporting by Zhijie Shao in Hong Kong