MCLC: corruption endemic in Chinese football

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: kirk (denton.2 at osu.edu)
Subject: corruption endemic in Chinese football
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Source: The Guardian (2/20/13):
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/feb/20/match-fixing-bribery-chinese-fo
otball

Match-fixing and bribery in Chinese football are endemic, sport insiders
say
A former footballer and a journalist blame game's woes on low player
salaries and machinations of local government officials
By Jonathan Kaiman

Match-fixing and bribery are endemic in Chinese football, primarily
because of low player salaries and unchecked local government officials,
according to the deputy editor-in-chief of a popular Chinese sports
newspaper and a former professional footballer.

Their insights into corruption at the top levels of the game in China cast
further light on the problems facing football, after the Chinese Football
Association (CFA) fined 12 club teams up to £103,000 and punished 58
current and former football officials, players and referees for
match-fixing and bribery.

Chinese footballers were prone to accepting bribes because their salaries
were often painfully low and delayed for months, said the ex-footballer,
who requested anonymity to avoid retaliation from former coaches and
teammates.

Before he retired, in 2009, the player said, he would often receive a
phone call from an unknown number the night before a match. The caller,
usually from a gambling syndicate, would offer him thousands of pounds to
let the other team win. The player never accepted their offers, he told
the Guardian.

"Most of the time, it was the defenders who got this kind of offer,
because they could allow the other team to score," he said. Goalkeepers,
he added, were especially popular targets. "Sometimes the whole team would
get involved in match-fixing, but only in rare cases," he said. "Most of
the time, you only need five players or fewer to accomplish the goal."

The footballer said conditions for players had improved dramatically over
the past three years. Yet before he retired, less important players on his
team made approximately £200 a month – barely enough to support their
families – and their wages rarely arrived on time. Before important games,
they were sometimes offered up to £5,000 to swing the match. Before the
anti-corruption drive, 30% of Chinese football matches were rigged, he
said.

Despite higher player salaries, football corruption remained a problem
because unchecked local government officials often manipulated matches to
manage their political relationships, said Ma Dexing, the deputy
editor-in-chief of the popular Chinese sports magazine Titan Weekly. "It
has nothing to do with money," he said: "it's just because of face."

The association had banned 25 former and current football officials,
referees and players from the sport for five years and 33 for life, state
media reported on Tuesday. The club team Shanghai Shenhua, which once
signed the former Chelsea stars Didier Drogba and Nicolas Anelka, was
fined £103,000 for fixing a match in 2003. It was stripped of that year's
league title and penalised with a six-point deduction for next season,
which begins in March.

Ma said: "The Chinese Football Association (CFA), they will punish
athletes or punish teams or punish referees, but they haven't punished any
local government officials. In reality, it's local government officials
who are conducting things from behind the scenes."

Ma added that local officials often had enormous power over football teams
within their jurisdictions. "They can ask the team's boss to kick a player
off the team if the player doesn't listen to him," he said.

This week's punishments mark the end of an extensive anti-corruption
campaign that kicked off in 2009 under the 58-year-old association
president, Wei Di. He put up a hard fight against match-fixing butrecently
resigned "over poor results", according to state media. China has not
fielded a team at the World Cup since 2002. Its national team failed to
reach the 2014 World Cup in Brazil after it ranked below Iraq and Jordan
in qualifying rounds.

Among those banned for life are the former Fifa World Cup referee Lu Jun,
four former national team players, and the former CFA leaders Nan Yong and
Xie Yalong, who were both sentenced to over a decade in jail last year for
accepting bribes. According to state media, Nan once said players could
purchase a spot on the national team for about £10,000.

Official efforts to clean up Chinese football may be gaining some
traction. The New York-based firm IMG Worldwide Inc will soon assume
management of China's most prestigious professional league, and foreign
star players have become an increasingly common sight on football fields
across the country.

Despite the league's notorious corruption problems and low standards of
play, China's stadiums are often packed with fans clad in team merchandise
and hurling obscenities. The senior Communist party leader Xi Jinping has
said he is a fan of the sport.

Yet some experts are sceptical that the CFA's anti-corruption measures are
strong enough to have an effect. "These are not really serious
punishments," Yan Qiang, vice-president of the sports publisher Titan
Media, told the French news agency AFP. "The professional football league
is getting more popular and attracting more public attention. But where
there is profit, there will be more people trying to get into it with
illegal ways, so it will be a continuing fight."