China sentences former English Premier League footballer Li Tai to 20 years in prison | Football news

The former national team coach is the biggest name to be arrested in China’s sweeping crackdown on corruption in sport.

China has jailed Li Te, a former coach of the Chinese national team who previously played for Everton Football Club in the English Premier League, for 20 years on bribery charges as part of a crackdown on corruption in sport.

He was sentenced by a court in Hubei Province on Friday, after convicting him of a series of crimes related to offering and receiving bribes.

The court said the 47-year-old is by far the biggest sports name to have registered in the process campaignHe dealt with bribes totaling 120 million yuan ($16.5 million) between 2015 and 2021, a period that included his two-year stint as national team coach.

Li pleaded guilty in court last March, but previously admitted arranging nearly $421,000 in bribes to secure the national coach’s job and fixing Chinese Super League matches in a documentary broadcast by CCTV in January.

CCTV occasionally broadcasts confessions by criminal suspects before they appear in court, a practice widely condemned by human rights groups.

Poor performance

Chinese football has been plagued by match-fixing and corruption since at least the late 1990s, with local fans blaming corruption for the national team’s continued poor performance.

President Xi Jinping’s anti-corruption campaign also saw former Chinese Football Association (CFA) president Chen Xiuyuan sentenced to life in prison earlier this year for taking bribes worth more than 81 million yuan ($11 million).

As part of the campaign, several senior football officials were given sentences ranging from 30 months to 14 years this year.

In September, the Chinese Football Association issued a decision to ban 38 players and five club officials for life after a two-year investigation into match-fixing and gambling.

The investigation concluded that 120 matches involving 41 football clubs had been rigged.

Xi is a soccer fan and wants China to one day host and win the World Cup, but the men’s national team has long failed to impress.

The International Federation of Association Football (FIFA) currently ranks China 90th in the world, one place behind the small island of Curacao in the Caribbean Sea.