Li Tie
He played for Everton and Sheffield: 20 years in prison for former football star
The footballer Li Tie once played in the Premier League and was a national team coach. His successes are said to have not been the right thing.
Former Chinese professional soccer player 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, the official Xinhua news agency reported. With the verdict, the 47-year-old joins the long list of celebrities affected by the state’s anti-corruption campaign in Chinese football.
Li was under contract with English first division clubs such as Everton FC and Sheffield United in the 2000s and later returned to China as a player. As a coach, he continued his career at Chinese clubs such as Hebei China Fortune. According to investigators, his success there was also due to the manipulation of games – the allegations became known through a documentary that China’s state television broadcast in January of this year.
Other football officials in China also convicted
Between 2020 and 2021, Li Tie coached the national team, which he had previously led as interim coach. However, he lost the position after poor results. In November 2022, authorities began a corruption investigation against Li. In the January state television broadcast, he admitted bribery and match-fixing.
In China, numerous verdicts have already been handed down against football players and officials who were sentenced to prison or banned for life from the football business for corruption and match-fixing. In March, for example, the former chairman of the Chinese Football Association, Chen Xuyuan, was sentenced to life in prison. The anti-corruption campaign also serves the goal of the football-loving state and party leader Xi Jinping to make the People’s Republic a great football nation.
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Source: Stern
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