Was also national coach

20 years! Ex-footballer sentenced for corruption

Li Tie (left) once played for the Chinese national soccer team and has now been convicted of corruption.(Bild: AFP/APA/PETER PARKS)

Former Chinese professional footballer and national team coach Li Tie has been sentenced to 20 years in prison for corruption. A court in the central Chinese city of Xianning found the former defensive player guilty of paying and accepting bribes, as reported by the official news agency Xinhua.

With this verdict, the 47-year-old joins a long list of celebrities affected by the state's anti-corruption campaign in Chinese soccer. Li was under contract with English Premier League clubs such as Everton FC and Sheffield United in the 2000s and later returned to China as a player.

He continued his career as a coach at Chinese clubs such as Hebei China Fortune. According to investigators, his success there was also due to match-fixing - the allegations were made public by a documentary broadcast by China's state television in January of this year.

Not the first case
Between 2020 and 2021, Li Tie coached the national team, which he had previously led as interim coach. However, he lost the post after poor results. In November 2022, the authorities launched a corruption investigation into Li. In the state television program in January, he admitted to bribery and match-fixing.

In China, numerous soccer players and officials have already been sentenced to prison or banned from soccer for life for corruption and match-fixing. In March, for example, the former chairman of the Chinese Football Association, Chen Xuyuan, was sentenced to life imprisonment. The anti-corruption campaign also serves the goal of the football-loving head of state and party leader Xi Jinping to turn the People's Republic into a great soccer nation.