BEIJING: China's football association issued lifetime bans to 73 people, including former national team head coach Li Tie, and punished 13 top professional clubs for match-fixing and corruption, it said Thursday.
Under President Xi Jinping, a sweeping anti-corruption crackdown has swept through Chinese football in recent years, exposing the rotten state of the professional game.
Several top officials in the Chinese Football Association (CFA) have been brought down, while dozens of players have been banned for match-fixing and gambling.
Thursday's statement did not specify when the most recently announced match-fixing took place, or how it worked.
The punishments were made after a "systematic review" and were needed "to enforce industry discipline, purify the football environment, and maintain fair competition", the CFA wrote on its official social media account Thursday.
Li, a former Everton player who led the national team from 2019 to 2021, is already serving a 20-year prison sentence for bribery, after being sentenced in December 2024.
He is now banned from all football activities for life, alongside 72 others, the CFA statement said.
Among them is Chen Xuyuan, former chairman of the CFA, who is already serving life in prison for accepting bribes worth $11 million.
The football clubs that will be punished are similarly high-profile.
Of the 16 clubs that competed in the 2025 season of the country's top Chinese Super League (CSL), 11 will have points docked and be fined.
Tianjin Jinmen Tiger and last season's runners-up Shanghai Shenhua face the stiffest sanctions, with 10-point reductions and one-million-yuan ($144,000) fines when the 2026 season begins in March.
Shanghai Port, champions for the last three seasons, will face a five-point reduction and a 400,000-yuan fine, the same punishment given to Beijing Guoan.