China Former coach Li Tie confessed to paying bribes to opposing players and officials to advance to the position of leading the Chinese national team.
Ahead of the 2024 Asian Cup, the entire Chinese national team was required to watch an anti-corruption documentary. In the film, many high-ranking Chinese officials and coaches appeared and confessed to crimes, including the 2019-2021 national team coach Li Tie.
"I'm so sorry," Li said in the film. "I should have chosen the right path. But in football at that time, doing wrong things was considered normal."
Li Tie confessed to bribery and match-fixing in a Chinese documentary, aired on January 10, 2024. Photo: screenshot
Li said he spent about $421,000 in bribes to be selected as head coach, after leading Wuhan Zall Club from 2017-2019. He convinced the club's leadership to spend $281,000 to bribe Chen Xuyuan - the president of the Chinese Football Association (CFA) at that time. Li also spent another $140,000 of his own money to bribe CFA General Secretary Du Zhaocai. The CFA President and General Secretary were important people in choosing the coach of the Chinese national team in 2019, when Li replaced his predecessor Marcello Lippi.
After Li was appointed, four Wuhan Zall players were called up to the national team, despite their poor performance. The club's president admitted this, also in the recently released documentary.
Li, 47, played as a defensive midfielder for Everton in 34 Premier League matches from 2002 to 2004. After retiring in 2012, he was invited by coach Lippi to become an assistant at Guangzhou Evergrande.
After gaining experience as an assistant on the national team, Li was selected to coach Hebei China Fortune in 2015. The club's leadership wanted Li to use his connections with players to bribe them to fix matches. "When I was a player, I hated match-fixing," Li says in the film. "But I accepted the offer because I thought it would help the team get promoted. And as my first time as a head coach of a team, I really wanted to prove my ability."
Li added that in order to achieve good results, he tried to influence referees, players and opposing coaches. "That behavior gradually became a habit for me, and eventually, I fell into this path," he said.
Li Tie during a Chinese training session in Wuhan on November 6, 2019. Photo: AFP
When he moved to Wuhan in 2017, Li continued to advocate bribery. In a match between Wuhan and Hebei in the Chinese second division in 2018, Li used his connections with former students at Hebei to fix the score. He received money from Wuhan, gave it to a Hebei player, and told him to share the money with the team’s key players to lose the match. The player did not share the money with anyone, but Hebei still lost according to Li’s wishes.
Li eventually helped Wuhan gain promotion and then replaced Lippi as head of the national team. On the day he was appointed by the CFA, he also signed a contract with Wuhan worth more than $8 million, as a form of corruption to bring Wuhan players to the national team and increase their value. However, he led China in 12 matches, with a win rate of only 50%. After China failed to qualify for the 2022 World Cup, Li had to resign.
Led by Chinese President Xi Jinping, authorities launched a corruption investigation into the CFA in late 2022. Ten senior CFA executives have been arrested, including Chen.
Chen, 68, has been president of the CFA since August 2019. In the film, Chen also admitted to receiving $42,000 from local officials twice, the day after his election, along with congratulations. During his tenure, he received about $1.4 million from domestic football teams. "They came into my room, put their suitcases on the sofa and congratulated me," Chen said. "I asked them, and they said it was a tradition, and everyone else did the same."
Chen is under investigation for bribery. Secretary General Du was also arrested in October 2023 for similar charges and expelled from the Party.
Li is also under investigation, accused of "serious violations of the law".
At the end of the film, a message is given to the current Chinese players, that "reviving and developing Chinese football is an inevitable task to build a sports superpower, and is also the desire of the majority of the people".
China have been led by Serbian coach Aleksandar Jankovic since July 2022, but have only achieved a winning rate of 36%. Jankovic and his team are in Group A of the 2023 Asian Cup with Qatar, Lebanon and Tajikistan. They play their opening match against Tajikistan in Doha at 9:30 p.m. on January 13, Hanoi time.
Xuan Binh
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