Ex-Everton participant jailed for bribery
The former coach of the Chinese nationwide males’s soccer crew has been sentenced to twenty years in jail for bribery, state media reported.
Li Tie, who additionally performed for Everton within the English Premier League, confessed earlier this yr to fixing matches, accepting bribes, and providing bribes to get the highest teaching job.
The case reveals how President Xi Jinping’s anti-corruption crackdown has lower by means of sport, banking and the army.
Earlier this week, three former officers from the Chinese Football Association (CFA) have been additionally handed jail sentences for bribery. More than a dozen coaches and gamers have been investigated.
Li, who was the nationwide crew’s head coach from January 2020 to December 2021, pleaded responsible in March to taking on $16 million in bribes.
The court docket mentioned that this occurred from 2015, when he was an assistant coach on the Hebei China Fortune Club, till 2021, when he stop because the nationwide coach.
In change for the bribes, Li would choose sure people for the nationwide crew and assist soccer golf equipment win competitions.
The 47-year-old was featured in an anti-corruption documentary aired by Chinese state broadcaster CCTV early this yr, whereby he apologised for his offences.
“I’m very sorry. I should have kept my head to the ground and followed the right path,” he mentioned. “There were certain things that at the time were common practices in football.”
Li had made 92 appearances for China and performed on the 2002 World Cup – the nation’s solely look within the finals to this point.
His former boss, the previous CFA president Chen Xuyuan, was sentenced to life in jail earlier this yr for accepting bribes value $11 million.
Xi had previously voiced his ambition to show China into a serious soccer energy.
In 2011, he spoke of his “three wishes” for Chinese soccer: to qualify for the World Cup once more, to host the match and to someday win the trophy.
But the current detentions and convictions of main soccer figures – a few of whom have been officers tasked to steer the soccer revolution – have dealt one other setback to the nation’s soccer ambitions.
This newest anti-graft marketing campaign echoes an earlier crackdown in Chinese soccer in 2010, when a number of officers, nationwide crew gamers and referees have been jailed for corruption.
That was additionally led by Xi, who was then China’s vice-president.
