China has sentenced former Premier League player and national football coach Li Tie to 20 years in prison for bribery, marking a significant development in the government’s sweeping crackdown on corruption in sports.
The 47-year-old, once one of China’s most prominent football figures, was found guilty of multiple bribery offenses, including taking nearly 51 million yuan ($7 million) in exchange for selecting players for the national team and helping them secure club contracts. The Hubei province court announced the sentence on Friday, describing it as “fixed-term imprisonment.”
Li, who played as a midfielder for Everton and earned nearly 100 international caps, served as China’s national coach from January 2020 to December 2021. However, state broadcaster CCTV revealed that he had used his influence to secure bribes and even paid 1 million yuan in 2019 to help secure his appointment as national team coach.
The court also detailed how Li and his associates paid millions in bribes to facilitate player transfers and manipulate match outcomes during his tenure at Wuhan Zall and other clubs, with offenses dating back to 2015.
A CCTV photo showed Li in court, wearing a black hooded sweater and flanked by police officers. His conviction came after he pleaded guilty earlier this year to accepting over $10 million in bribes. He also appeared in a January documentary by CCTV confessing to arranging bribes to secure his coaching role and admitting to helping fix matches.
“I’m very sorry. I should have stayed grounded and followed the right path,” Li said in the program, acknowledging that such practices were once commonplace in Chinese football.
Li’s sentencing is the latest in a series of corruption convictions in Chinese football, part of a broader anti-graft campaign spearheaded by President Xi Jinping. In the same week:
• Liu Yi, former secretary general of the Chinese Football Association (CFA), received an 11-year sentence and a fine of 3.6 million yuan ($495,000).
• Tan Hai, ex-head of the CFA referees management office, was sentenced to six and a half years and fined 200,000 yuan.
• Qi Jun, former CFA chief of strategic planning, was handed a seven-year sentence and fined 600,000 yuan.
• In March, former CFA chief Chen Xuyuan was jailed for life for bribery.
Xi, a self-proclaimed football fan, has made the sport a national priority, with ambitions for China to host and win the World Cup. However, the men’s national team continues to struggle, currently ranked 90th in the world, just above Curaçao.
While proponents of Xi’s anti-corruption drive argue that it promotes clean governance, critics suggest it also serves as a tool to eliminate political rivals. China’s tightly controlled legal system, with its near-100% conviction rate, has faced criticism from rights groups for practices such as airing confessions before trials.
