“The corruption in Chinese football does not only exist in certain individual areas – it’s everywhere, in each and every aspect,” Chen said in the CCTV documentary on Tuesday.
Chen, who was charged with bribery in September, said he had received a “congratulatory” 300,000 yuan (US$42,000) each from two club officials the night before he became CFA boss in 2019, which they said was “the old rules of the game”. “If I tried to clean up the environment, wouldn’t I get myself caught?”
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The CCTV documentary focused on an investigation into football by the graft-buster – the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection – that began last year after the Chinese team was eliminated during the preliminary stage of the Qatar World Cup.
“We also wanted … to answer the question of why the Chinese men’s football could never do well,” Ding Jintian, deputy head of the CCDI team looking into the sport, said in the documentary.
Chinese leader Xi is known as an ardent football fan who wants the nation to become a superpower in the sport.
It had a “golden bubble” from 2010 to 2019, with billions of dollars of investment going into the professional leagues, clubs hiring world-class players and managers, and foreign players becoming citizens so they could compete for China in the World Cup.
But the bubble burst in 2020-21 as some of football’s top investors from the struggling real estate sector withdrew from the sport, and it was hit by harsh pandemic restrictions and an economic slowdown.
Li, head coach of the national team from 2019 to 2021, also appeared in the documentary. He said as a player, he hated match-fixing but as a coach he realised it could improve his chance of winning – and advance his career.
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“Once you achieve success in the wrong way, you become more and more desperate for more success,” Li said. “This way then becomes a habit, and later on you even develop some reliance on it.”
The former defender had a “miraculous” eight victories out of nine matches in his debut season as manager of Hebei China Fortune, winning the team promotion to the Chinese Super League in 2015. Wuhan Zall Football Club was similarly promoted when Li was its manager in 2018.
But CCDI official Luo Chuan, who was involved in the investigation, said in the documentary that these successes were the result of bribery and match-fixing.
In the final match of the 2015 season alone, Hebei China Fortune spent some 14 million yuan bribing opponents Shenzhen Football Club – from the manager to the players, the Hebei team’s then-president Meng Jing said in the documentary.
Li – through his assistant coach – had asked Shenzhen player Li Fei to share a 6 million yuan bribe with his key teammates to fix the match. Hebei China Fortune won 2-0, finishing runner-up overall to gain promotion to the top league.
But Li Fei had kept the full bribe for himself – a detail that did not come out until the CCDI investigation. “I didn’t bother asking anyone,” he said in the documentary. “[Hebei China Fortune] had many advantages and would have won that match anyway.”
Li Tie also persuaded Wuhan Zall to fix matches to get promoted when he was the club’s manager, according to the documentary.
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It said a 2 million yuan payment to CFA chairman Chen, “sponsored” by Wuhan Zall, and 1 million yuan for Liu Yi, the CFA’s secretary general, got Li Tie the job as head coach of the national side.
Li Tie then signed a 60 million yuan deal with Wuhan Zall in exchange for selecting four players for international appearances, “none of whom was good enough to enter the national team”, club president Tian Xudong said. “I felt my face blush with shame when I saw the national squad list that day.”
Du Zhaocai, the former deputy sports minister who was arrested in October, also appeared in the documentary. It said he had covered up match-fixing in a 2022 investigation after receiving tens of millions of yuan.
Breaking down during his confession, Chen said he took “the main responsibility as the chairman of the CFA”. “I must admit my guilt and apologise to all Chinese football fans,” he said.
