China jails ex-football head coach for bribery

The former coach of the Chinese national men's football team has been sentenced to 20 years in jail for bribery, state media reported.

Li Tie, who also played for Everton in the English Premier League, confessed earlier this year to fixing matches, accepting bribes, and offering bribes to get the top coaching job.

The case shows how President Xi Jinping's anti-corruption crackdown has cut through sport, banking and the military.

Earlier this week, three former officials from the Chinese Football Association (CFA) were also handed jail sentences for bribery. More than a dozen coaches and players have been investigated.

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 said that this happened from 2015, when he was an assistant coach at the Hebei China Fortune Club, until 2021, when he quit as the national coach.

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 early this year, wherein he apologised for his offences.

"I'm very sorry. I should have kept my head to the ground and followed the right path," he said. "There were certain things that at the time were common practices in football."

Li had made 92 appearances for China and played at the 2002 World Cup - the country's only appearance in the finals so far.

His former boss, the former CFA president Chen Xuyuan, was sentenced to life in prison earlier this year for accepting bribes worth $11 million.

Xi had in the past voiced his ambition to turn China into a major football power.

In 2011, he spoke of his "three wishes" for Chinese football: to qualify for the World Cup again, to host the tournament and to one day win the trophy.

But the recent detentions and convictions of major football figures - some of whom were officials tasked to lead the football revolution - have dealt another setback to the country's football ambitions.

This latest anti-graft campaign echoes an earlier crackdown in Chinese football in 2010, when several officials, national team players and referees were jailed for corruption.

That was also led by Xi, who was then China's vice-president.

Rowan Simons, who authored the book Bamboo Goalposts, on his long-term efforts to develop grassroots football in China, told BBC Chinese earlier this year: "In many ways, [the current campaign] looks exactly the same as it was 10 years ago with a different set of characters.

"How is it different? There's much more money involved."

Additional reporting by Zhijie Shao in Hong Kong