International
Ex-Chinese national football team coach, Li Tie, bags 20 years in prison for bribery
A former Chinese national men’s football team coach Li Tie has been sentenced to 20 years in prison for bribery, according to state media reports, on Thursday.
Li, who also played for Everton in the English Premier League, confessed earlier this year to fixing matches, accepting bribes, and offering bribes to secure the top coaching job.
The sentence is the latest in a series of high-profile convictions in China’s ongoing anti-corruption crackdown, which has cut through the sports, banking, and military sectors.
President Xi Jinping’s anti-corruption campaign has been relentless, with more than a dozen coaches and players investigated in the football sector alone.
Li, who was the national team’s head coach from January 2020 to December 2021, pleaded guilty in March to taking over $16 million in bribes.
The court found that Li had accepted bribes from 2015, when he was an assistant coach at the Hebei China Fortune Club, until 2021, when he quit as the national coach.
Read Also: Court strikes out N4.8bn fraud charge against businessman, Cletus Ibeto, after part payment
In exchange for the bribes, Li would select certain individuals for the national team and help football clubs win competitions.
The 47-year-old was featured in an anti-corruption documentary aired by Chinese state broadcaster CCTV earlier this year, in which he apologized for his offenses.
“I’m very sorry. I should have kept my head to the ground and followed the right path,” Li said. “There were certain things that at the time were common practices in football.”
Li’s sentencing is a significant blow to Chinese football, which has been plagued by corruption and match-fixing scandals in recent years. The former coach had made 92 appearances for China and played at the 2002 World Cup, the country’s only appearance in the finals so far.
The recent detentions and convictions of major football figures, including Li and former Chinese Football Association president Chen Xuyuan, who was sentenced to life in prison earlier this year for accepting bribes worth $11 million, have dealt a significant setback to China’s football ambitions.
President Xi Jinping had previously voiced his ambition to turn China into a major football power, but the recent corruption scandals have raised questions about the country’s ability to achieve this goal.
Rowan Simons, author of the book “Bamboo Goalposts,” which chronicles his long-term efforts to develop grassroots football in China, told BBC Chinese earlier this year that the current anti-graft campaign in Chinese football is reminiscent of a similar crackdown in 2010.
“In many ways, [the current campaign] looks exactly the same as it was ten years ago with a different set of characters,” Simons said. “How is it different? There’s much more money involved.”
Join the conversation
Support Ripples Nigeria, hold up solutions journalism
Balanced, fearless journalism driven by data comes at huge financial costs.
As a media platform, we hold leadership accountable and will not trade the right to press freedom and free speech for a piece of cake.
If you like what we do, and are ready to uphold solutions journalism, kindly donate to the Ripples Nigeria cause.
Your support would help to ensure that citizens and institutions continue to have free access to credible and reliable information for societal development.
