Li Tie and me
Chinese football legend is appealing his 20-year sentence for corruption
I’ve always had a bit of a soft spot for Li Tie.
You see, 22 years ago at about this time of year, a little-known Chinese football player was starting to turn a few heads in the Premier League as a defensive midfielder for Everton. The club had signed him on loan after he’d played at the 2002 World Cup. (In fact, the story of his signing is an absolute cracker, which I tweeted about here and covered in my book in more detail here).
Anyway, as the sole scouse reporter (at that time) on Sky TV’s Soccer Saturday program - later featured regularly on Ted Lasso! -
was sent up to Merseyside to interview him. He returned with the footage, having enlisted the help of Li’s translator May Zhang and set about trying to edit the piece. Instead of going with subtitles, I was asked to voice over Li Tie’s words with as good a translation as we could make out from May’s notes. Discounting a brief cameo on the BBC’s Crime Watch program during a student internship, that was the first time I’d “appeared” on TV - hence the soft spot.
Fast forward 20 years and Li Tie - who’d retired after playing 92 times for China and was also head coach of the Chinese national team from 2019-2021 - was picked up for questioning by the authorities on November 9, 2022, while attending a coaching training course in Dalian.
The next two years proceeded in slow motion, as Li was held in detention long past the point when he should have been charged (or released), wheeled out to “confess” his crimes on a CCTV “documentary”, before his trial eventually took place. Earlier this month, he was sentenced to 20 years in prison (or an additional 18 years after time already served was taken into account). Li is currently appealing that decision and while I’m no legal expert, I struggle to recall (m)any cases where defendants in China have successfully had their sentences reduced, let alone in a case as high profile as this one.
So, did he do it?
Well, given the soft spot and all, I’d like to think not. But honestly, we’ll never truly know what he did or didn’t do. Li’s ruling caps a series of similar sentences handed out to high-profile officials, including Chen Xuyuan (former President of the Chinese Football Association, life sentence) and Du Zhaocai (former deputy director of the Sports Ministry and former Party secretary of the CFA, 14 years) and many, many more. I’ve been covering Chinese football for the best part of two decades and it feels like this latest episode could have come at literally any time during that period.
As I told Lars Hamer at the South China Morning Post, “we’ve seen this movie too many times before. I don’t for a minute think this case and all of the other related ones will have made any substantial, long-term difference to corruption in the system, and - sadly - I don’t expect things to improve on the pitch, either.”
Whoever thinks that this will mark a turnaround for Chinese football - as the SCMP editorial board appears to do here - needs their head examined. The system is rotten to the core and replacing the individuals will do nothing more than paralyze into inaction those that remain - until the whole cycle repeats again in a few years.
On a separate note, the State Council mentioned football at a recent meeting. It was unusual, but there was little point. A carefully planned 50-point overhaul of Chinese football released in 2015 has essentially made no difference whatsoever: China’s FIFA world ranking (albeit not a perfect metric, but the best there is) has basically remained the same a decade later. So forgive me for thinking that the fact football was mentioned in a meeting in 2024 won’t make a jot of difference.
In case you’re thinking I can’t always have been this wise/cynical [delete as appropriate], I’ve been on record in the heady period that followed that 2015 plan as saying that while China wasn’t going to win the World Cup in my lifetime, it could still have a shot at being a top 20-30 team in the world at some point. With every passing year, I’ve revised that downwards, and I won’t allow my (once) youthful optimism to get the better of me again.
So where does that leave us?
Well, it leaves me a little sad, if I’m honest. Li Tie’s playing career was truly groundbreaking and he followed that up by managing his national team - the highest honour possible. A 20-year sentence brings all that to a crushing end.
But then I think of Li Tie spending the best part of the rest of his life away from his wife and daughter, knowing that his “sacrifice” (if that’s the right word) won’t make any material difference to the fortunes of the Chinese national team.
And that’s where the words run out.