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The Chinese Football Federation has permanently banned 43 people from football. They were accused of match-fixing and other forms of corruption. This is the next move in the latest attempt to root out corruption in the country's so far underperforming team sport.
The official Xinhua news agency reported on Tuesday that Zhang Xiaopeng, a senior police official, attended a press conference in Dalian where he gave details of a "2-year investigation that uncovered a series of gambling cases". on the Internet, tricks and bribery".
"Xinhua" specified that 120 matches in domestic leagues, 128 suspects of crimes and 41 clubs were involved in the investigation. Of those banned, 38 were players and 5 were officials working for different clubs.
Former Chinese national team players Jin Jingdao, Guo Tianyu and Gu Chao were among those banned for life from the sport. Other players and officials were given shortened suspensions, including foreign players lured to China by the promise of high wages.
South Korean Son Jun-ho, who played for China's Shandong Taishan FC, and Cameroon's Ewolo Donovan, who previously played for Heilongjiang Ice City, were handed five-year bans each.
Chinese President Xi Jinping has vowed to make China a soccer superpower, but the men's teams have not had much success. Promises to build new fields and hire staff have failed as the economy struggles to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic.
Japan thrashed China 7-0 last week to open the third round of Asian qualifiers for the 2026 World Cup. It was China's heaviest defeat against Japan, a geopolitical rival in Asia. China has only qualified for the World Cup once, where they lost all three of their group games, in 2002.
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