BEIJING: Chinese football banned 43 people for life on Tuesday (Sept 10) over alleged gambling and match-fixing, including three former China internationals and South Korean World Cup player Son Jun-ho, state media said.
Under President Xi Jinping, Beijing has deepened a crackdown on corruption in Chinese sports, especially football, in recent years and jailed numerous top officials.
Xi is a self-confessed football fanatic who has said he dreams of China hosting and winning the World Cup.
But that ambition appears further away than ever after repeated corruption scandals and years of disappointing results on the pitch.
The banned 43 were mostly players who were among a total of 128 people implicated in a two-year probe into illegal gambling and match-fixing in the domestic game, China's public security ministry said, according to state media.
The news came hours before a home 2026 World Cup qualifier between China and Saudi Arabia and less than a week after the national team suffered a humiliating 7-0 defeat to rivals Japan.
The Chinese Football Association (CFA) accused Son, who played for Shandong Taishan in the Chinese Super League, of participating in match-fixing and taking bribes.
The international midfielder, who appeared in three of South Korea's four matches at the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, returned to South Korea in March after being held in China since May 2023.
Beijing said at the time that he was detained "on suspicion of accepting bribes by non-state employees", without providing details.
A representative for the 32-year-old Son, who now plays in South Korea's top domestic league, told Yonhap News Agency they were "bewildered" by the allegations and that Son would hold a news conference to address the claims.
Also banned from Chinese football for life is Jin Jingdao, another former Shandong Taishan player, and fellow Chinese internationals Guo Tianyu and Gu Chao.
Ex-chief jailed
China's football governing body has been under scrutiny. So far, about 10 high-ranking CFA officials have been brought down in corruption probes.
The government handed a lifetime prison sentence to Chen Xuyuan, the former chairman of the CFA, in March for receiving what it called "particularly huge" bribes and said his actions "seriously damaged fair competition and order".
Chen took advantage of his positions at the CFA and other bodies to "illegally accept sums of money from other people totalling 81.03mil yuan (US$11mil)", the Communist Party-run People's Daily newspaper said.
He "caused serious consequences for the national football industry", it said.
The former head coach of China's national team and ex-Everton midfielder Li Tie pleaded guilty the same month to accepting more than US$10.7mil in bribes and helping to fix matches.
And in May, state broadcaster CCTV reported that Gou Zhongwen, former director of the General Administration of Sport of China, was under investigation for corruption.
A Chinese court sentenced Li Yuyi, a former vice-president of the Chinese Football Association, to 11 years in jail in August, also for taking bribes. – AFP
