Chinese Soccer Player Spills Beans on Match-Fixing Epidemic

Match fixing was rife in Chinese soccer and reached its peak during the pandemic when games were taking place in empty stadiums. Coaches and managers would buy and sell games from one another, and players would bet regularly on their teams to lose, knowing that the fix was in.

That’s according to a former Chinese Super League player, who spoke under condition of anonymity to The South China Morning Post.

Two weeks ago, China’s Football Association banned 43 players and officials from the sport for life following a widespread investigation into corruption and match-fixing. Some 120 matches were implicated in the investigation, which involved 128 criminal suspects and 41 teams, authorities said.

Among them were former Chinese internationals Jin Jingdao, Guo Tianyu, and Gu Chao. South Korea international and World Cup star Son Jun-ho was also banned.

‘Coerced Confession’

Days later, during a press conference in South Korea, Son described how he had been detained by Chinese authorities for almost a year and “coerced” into confessing to accepting bribes.

He claimed the police showed him pictures of his children and threatened to arrest his wife unless he admitted to the charges, which he says he didn’t fully understand.

Some observers of Chinese soccer wondered whether certain players were being scapegoated for the Chinese national team’s failure on the world stage.

In 2015, President Xi Jinping declared his ambition to revive the fortunes of the men’s national team and one day lift the World Cup.

But despite billions being plowed into the game, the team has gone backward since then. The CFA sanctions were announced just one week after China’s humiliating 7-0 defeat by Japan. Chinese authorities blame the corruption in soccer for the national team’s failings.

Laid Bare

That corruption was laid bare by The Morning Post source, a player in his mid-30s who still plays in a league in Asia.

He claimed he experienced match-fixing in Chinese second-tier games, where coaches and team managers would collude with each other, buying games from one another so they could gain promotion or avoid relegation.

It got so bad that I knew which games we were going to sell … I could tell from the training two days before if we were going to try and play,” the source said. “If we were trying to win, in training, we’d do 11 v 11 games, we’d have set piece training, team meetings, video analysis.

“But if we were going to lose, days before we’d be playing 15 versus 15 in training, on half-size pitches, and the coaches would join in, it was like being back in school.”

“A lot of the players were seeing what I was seeing, and then they would just bet on us to lose,” the player said.