The former coach of the Chinese men's national soccer team has been sentenced to 20 years in prison for bribery, state media reported.
Li Te, who also played for Everton in the Premier League, admitted earlier this year to fixing matches, accepting bribes and offering bribes to get the top coaching job.
The case shows how President Xi Jinping's anti-corruption campaign has affected sports, banking and the military.
Earlier this week, three former Chinese Football Association officials were sentenced to prison for bribery. More than a dozen coaches and players were investigated.
Li, who was the national team's head coach from January 2020 to December 2021, pleaded guilty in March to receiving more than $16 million in bribes.
The court said this happened from 2015, when he was an assistant coach at Hebei China Fortune, until 2021, when he resigned from coaching the national team.
In exchange for bribes, Li would select specific individuals for the national team and help football clubs win competitions.
The 47-year-old appeared in an anti-corruption documentary broadcast by Chinese broadcaster CCTV early this year, where he apologized for his crimes.
“I'm very sorry. I should have kept my head down and followed the right path,” he said. “There were some things that at the time were common practices in football.”
Li made 92 appearances for China and played in the 2002 World Cup, the country's only appearance in the finals to date.
his former boss, Former CFA President Chen XiuyuanHe was sentenced to life in prison earlier this year for accepting $11 million in bribes.
Xi has in the past expressed his ambition to transform China into a major football power.
In 2011, he spoke of his “three wishes” for Chinese football: to qualify for another World Cup, host the tournament and one day win the cup.
But the recent arrests and convictions of prominent football figures – some of them officials charged with leading the football revolution – have been another setback for the country's football ambitions.
This latest anti-corruption campaign mirrors a previous crackdown on Chinese football in 2010, when several officials, national team players and referees were jailed on corruption charges.
This was also led by Xi, who was then Chinese Vice President.
“In many ways, (the current campaign) looks exactly as it did 10 years ago,” Rowan Simmons, who wrote the book Bamboo Goalposts, about his long-term efforts to develop grassroots football in China, told BBC China earlier this year. “Years.” With a different set of characters.
“How is it different? There's a lot more money.”
Additional reporting by Ziggy Chow in Hong Kong
