Reporter Lu Mi reported that on the evening of January 9, CCTV's annual anti-corruption blockbuster "Continue to Make Efforts to Promote in Depth" broadcast the last episode, and the anti-corruption case in Chinese football "finale". In November 2022, Li Tie's dismissal involved systemic corruption cases from the Chinese Football League to the Chinese Super League, clubs to national teams, and local football associations to the Chinese Football Association. The number of people investigated and punished, the amount of money involved, and the wide range of areas affected far exceeded those of Chinese football anti-gambling and anti-crime ten years ago.
Starting from the end of 2022, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection and the State Supervision Commission, together with the Discipline Inspection and Supervision Group of the General Administration of Sports of the People's Republic of China and the Hubei Provincial Commission for Discipline Inspection and Supervision, have adopted the "room-group-local" joint case-handling mechanism to thoroughly investigate a series of corruption cases in the football field and dig deep into the root causes of the problems behind them. Systemic corruption in the industry is the fundamental cause of the downturn and even destruction of the industry, if we want Chinese football to get up, we must not only pull out the carbuncle, but also "can't be corrupted, dare not be corrupted, don't want to be corrupted" deeply rooted in the minds of every practitioner, and fundamentally solve the problem.
In November 2022, Li Tie, the former head coach of the Chinese national men's football team, was investigated by the supervisory authorities, and the anti-corruption campaign in football kicked off. Subsequently, more than a dozen high-level and middle-level cadres of the Chinese Football Association were reviewed and investigated. The discipline inspection and supervision organs will also work with the public security organs to investigate dozens of people involved in the case, covering coaches, players, referees, club executives, agents and other aspects.
The anti-corruption case in football started with Li Tie, from his tenure as the coach of Hebei Huaxia Happiness, and his two successes were a springboard for his coaching career and the beginning of the abyss. During the investigation, it was found that behind his two successful overruns was a large number of match-fixing. The clubs disclosed in the feature film mainly include Hebei Huaxia Happiness, Wuhan Zall and Shenzu, which was still called Shenzhen Yuheng at that time. The relevant personnel who appeared were Meng Jing, then chairman of Huaxia Club, Tian Xudong, then chairman of Wuhan Zall Club, and the coaches involved in the case were Li Tie's assistant coach Zheng Bin and Shenzhen football player Li Fei.
In the last game of the Huaxia Happiness Super Season, Meng Jing disclosed that the club had invested 14 million yuan for this. "At that time, I greeted the Shenzhen club, the head coach and the players. Li Tie instructed assistant coach Zheng Bin to contact Shenzu defender Li Fei and gave the other party 6 million yuan as funds to "dot" other players. But Li Fei finally swallowed the money by himself, because Shenzu, who had been relegated at that time, actually had no ability to prevent Huaxia from winning.
This is just one of the cases, according to this newspaper, after Li Tie was taken away and placed in detention, the discipline inspection and supervision team investigated all the game videos of Li Tie during his coaching in the Chinese League, including the information of the law enforcement referees of the relevant games, and many active defenders and goalkeepers have gone to Beijing to investigate. It can be seen from the follow-up personnel who were taken away for investigation that Li Tie's match-fixing case did not stop there. Whether it is Huaxia Happiness or Wuhan Zall, they are all clubs that have been disbanded, and Shenzu may disappear completely this winter, and CCTV's feature film does not mention more clubs that may be involved in fakes.
And by manipulating match-fixing, Li Tie did get what he thought was the highlight of his coaching career, but as all those who know him said, his ambition has long been aimed at the position of head coach of the national team.
In August 2019, the upcoming East Asian Cup finally gave Li Tie an opportunity, on the one hand, he lobbied the Zall club to pay for him to do the work, saying that if he could "get on top", he would also repay the club in many ways, for which the club took out 2 million yuan to bribe Chen Xuyuan, chairman of the Chinese Football Association. On the other hand, Li Tie felt that Liu Yi, the then secretary general of the Football Association, who was responsible for the selection of coaches, also had a lot of right to speak, so he gave Liu Yi 1 million yuan out of his own pocket. So much so that the so-called competition for the head coach of the national team later became a real formalism. At that time, Li Tie was running together, as well as Wang Baoshan, the then coach of Henan Jian, and Li Xiaopeng, the then head coach of Shandong Luneng team, but the two understood early on that the so-called "competition" was just a companion.
Since Li Tie led the national selection team in the East Asian Cup, he has been using power for personal gain in the selection of players, which also involves player agents, and many players he has interviewed privately. What was revealed in the feature film was that Li Tie and Zall Club signed a "contract" with a total amount of 60 million yuan to cover up the essence of the power-for-money transaction. He quickly added four players from the Zall squad to the national squad. Even though the outside world is overwhelmed with doubts about the selection of these four people, Li Tie is still self-respecting.
Who gave Li Tie such authority and courage? Can he unscrupulously exercise power in the national team? The answer is obvious: Chen Xuyuan, former chairman of the Chinese Football Association, was upright and laissez-faire, and Du Zhaocai, deputy director of the General Administration of Sports, ignored and let it go.
The unhealthy trend in Chinese football continues to grow and spread, and Chen Xuyuan, as the former head of the Football Association, cannot escape the blame. As he himself reflected in front of the camera, "I also collected money from the club myself, so I wouldn't catch this kind of atmosphere, because if you go to catch this atmosphere, isn't it you yourself who catch it?"
When he took office, two officials from the local football association went to his office to "worship the pier", Chen Xuyuan revealed: "(They) came to my room, put the backpack on my sofa, and said Chairman Chen congratulated you, congratulated you, and hoped to take more care of you, and then I said something, he said that the old rules are old, and we are all like this." An "old rule" reflects that in this industry, bribing superiors for "care" is by no means the beginning of Chen Xuyuan's term.
"As the president of the Football Association, I am mainly responsible, I want to deeply apologize to the fans across the country, I was wrong, I really think I was wrong, I regret myself very much, there is no regret medicine to buy, if there is regret medicine to buy, I am willing to buy it back with my life......" After the East Window incident, Chen Xuyuan's crying in the face of the interview camera now seems particularly ironic - it is disclosed in the special feature that in the past few years, he has received tens of millions of yuan from many clubs.
As the secretary of the Party Committee of the Chinese Football Association, Du Zhaocai also relied on sports to eat sports, football to eat football, and received tens of millions of yuan. In 2022, there were clues that some matches in the Chinese League were suspected of match-fixing and gambling, and after receiving the relevant clues, the General Administration of Sports of the People's Republic of China asked Du Zhaocai to take the lead in investigating and dealing with it, but Du Zhaocai secretly changed the concept and used the so-called research to perfunctory. No problems were identified and no one was dealt with.
When reflecting on it today, Du Zhaocai knew that "he did not do a good job as the goalkeeper of the anti-corruption struggle in Chinese football" and "it was actually subjective reasons and was not strictly controlled", but he still subconsciously said that he was "in the 'hunting' of the interests of the club owner, and some went with the flow." ”
The two were supposed to be leaders in the football industry, but they became the culprits who undermined the industry. Chinese football is in a mess after the ebb of Jinyuan football, and they know that it is not possible to do a good job in Chinese football if they want to implement the "Football Reform Plan" during their term of office, so they bet their "political achievements" on the World Cup. But they didn't understand that Chinese football always affects the whole body, and if one part is broken, the whole carriage cannot run smoothly. With the defeat of the national football team in the world preliminaries, the dream of "relying on football to eat football" and "wanting to be an official and making a fortune" is destined to be shattered.
With the fall of Li Tie, Chen Xuyuan, Du Zhaocai, and more related personnel, what awaits them is the trial of the law. After a lapse of 12 years, a reincarnation ushered in a liquidation, after the liquidation, there are many warnings left for practitioners and industry managers, systemic corruption is the biggest carbuncle in the industry, only the idea of "can't be corrupted, dare not be corrupted, don't want to be corrupted" is rooted in the minds of every practitioner, and the green field will be truly clear.