Chinese former football star Li Tie, who also served as coach of the country's national men's team, has been handed a sentence of 20 years on corruption charges.
我国前足球明星、曾担任国家队男足主教练的李铁，因腐败指控被判刑20年。
Li, who also played as a midfielder for the English Premier League side Everton, is the latest to fall amid China's far-reaching anti-corruption campaign in its sports sector, and especially on football.
李铁还曾在英超埃弗顿队担任中场球员，他是我国体育界，尤其是足球领域广泛反腐行动中最新落马的人物。
He was convicted of taking bribes worth over 110 million yuan (US$ 15.1 million) between 2015 and 2021, according to state media CCTV on Friday.
Prosecutors in China's Hubei province said that Li accepted more than 50 million yuan (US$ 6.8 million) in bribes from 2019 to 2021 when he was coach of China's national and selection team from 2019 to 2021.
The court heard that during this period Li offered favours, like picking certain players for the national team and signing deals with particular football clubs. He also offered bribes of about 3 million yuan (US$ 412,800) to get his coaching role with the national team in 2019.
The former head coach, who also represented China on the field at the 2002 World Cup, confessed to match-fixing and bribery in a documentary aired on state television in January.
The CCTV documentary focused on an investigation into football by the party's corruption watchdog the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) that began in 2023 after the Chinese team was eliminated in the preliminary stage of the Qatar World Cup.
The programme also featured Chen Xuyuan, a former chairman of the Chinese Football Association, who said corruption was rife in the sport.
该节目还采访了中国足球协会前主席陈戌源，他坦言足球领域的腐败现象十分普遍。
"The corruption in Chinese football does not only exist in certain individual areas – it's everywhere, in each and every aspect," Chen said in the CCTV documentary on Tuesday.
“我国足球腐败不是在一个方面，是全方位的。”陈戌源在周二中央电视台的纪录片中说道。
Chen, who was charged with bribery in September 2023, said he had received a "congratulatory" 300,000 yuan (US$42,000) each from two club officials the night before he became CFA boss in 2019, which they said was "the old rules of the game". "If I tried to clean up the environment, wouldn't I get myself caught?"
During his appearance in the documentary, Li – who was head coach of the national team from 2019 to 2021 – said that as a player, he hated match-fixing but as a coach he realised it could improve his chance of winning – and advance his career.
"Once you achieve success in the wrong way, you become more and more desperate for more success," he said. "This way then becomes a habit, and later on you even develop some reliance on it."
Li was sacked for the national team's performance in the Qatar World Cup and was the first from the sport to be placed under investigation by the anti-corruption watchdog, in November 2022. He was charged with several counts of bribery in August last year.
The former defender had a "miraculous" eight victories out of nine matches in his debut season as manager of Hebei China Fortune, winning the team promotion to the Chinese Super League in 2015. Wuhan Zall Football Club was similarly promoted when Li was its manager in 2018.
But CCDI official Luo Chuan, who was involved in the investigation, said in the documentary that these successes were the result of bribery and match-fixing.
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