“I’m very sorry. I should have kept my head to the ground and followed the right path.” Li Tie said that on a state television documentary about corruption in Chinese football, broadcast early in 2024. Later that year a court gave him 20 years.
State media reported the sentence on 13 December 2024, the BBC said. Li, 47, coached China’s national men’s team from January 2020 to December 2021, and he also played in the English Premier League for Everton. Dawn, relaying AFP, noted that he made 34 league appearances in England between 2002 and 2004. The BBC counted 92 caps for China and a place in the 2002 World Cup squad, the country’s only appearance at the finals so far.
The charges
Li had already pleaded guilty. Dawn reported that on a Thursday in March 2024 he appeared before a court in central Hubei province, where authorities said he gave and took bribes and took part in match fixing. The court said he accepted more than 77 million yuan ($10.7 million) between 2017 and 2021, some of it while coaching Wuhan Zall. “Li Tie made his final statement, pleaded guilty and expressed remorse,” the court said.
The BBC’s account puts the total higher. It said he admitted taking over $16 million in bribes, starting in 2015, when he was an assistant coach at Hebei China Fortune Club, and running until 2021, when he quit the national job. In return, the BBC said, he picked certain players for the national team and helped clubs win competitions. He also paid bribes himself, to get the top coaching post.
In the CCTV programme he said he had arranged nearly $421,000 in bribes to land the head coach job. He also said he helped fix matches while coaching in the Chinese Super League. “There were certain things that at the time were common practices in football,” he said. Dawn pointed out that CCTV routinely broadcasts confessions before suspects reach court, a practice rights groups condemn.
A wider purge
Li was not alone. His former boss, Chen Xuyuan, who chaired the Chinese Football Association, was jailed for life in March 2024 over bribes worth $11 million. Earlier in the week of Li’s sentence, three former CFA officials received prison terms for bribery. The BBC said more than a dozen coaches and players have been investigated.
It described the football cases as one front in President Xi Jinping’s anti-corruption drive, which has also reached banking and the military. Xi once listed “three wishes” for the national game in 2011: qualify for the World Cup again, host it, and one day win it. The recent convictions, in the BBC’s words, dealt another setback to those ambitions.
China did this once before. The BBC recalled a 2010 crackdown that jailed officials, national team players and referees, also under Xi, then vice-president. Rowan Simons, author of “Bamboo Goalposts,” told BBC Chinese the current campaign “looks exactly the same as it was 10 years ago with a different set of characters.” The difference, he said, is “much more money involved.”
Sources
- Former China coach Li Tie pleads guilty to taking over $10m in bribes – Newspaper – DAWN.COM
- China jails ex-football head coach Li Tie for bribery
