China footballer

A former Chinese soccer star and coach of the country’s national men’s team has been sentenced to 20 years in prison for corruption, state media reported on Friday. Li Tie, 47, who played for the English Premier League Everton alongside Wayne Rooney in the early 2000s, is the biggest name to fall foul of a sweeping crackdown on rampant graft in China’s professional soccer league. Despite leader Xi Jinping’s vision to turn China into a “world soccer superpower,” Chinese professional soccer has been mired with poor financial decision making, deep-rooted corruption and disappointing performance. In 2022, after China’s national men’s…