Former Premier League player Li Tie has been sentenced to life imprisonment for corruption charges, MySportDab reports.
Li Tie played for Everton in the 2002/03 season, joining the club on loan from a Chinese club Liaoning. He recorded an impressive loan shift with the club and signed a permanent contract the next season.
Li was set for a stellar Premier League career following his standout performance for the Toffees but he suffered a heavy setback in 2004 when he picked up a gruesome leg injury while on international duty with China.
Li Tie (left) played for Everton between 2003 to 2006
He would see his career come to an end due to the injury as he struggled with niggling injury crisis after the leg injury.
Being a top-class footballer, it was easy for the 46-year-old to quickly rise through the ranks in Chinese football after his playing career.
In 2019, he was appointed the head coach of China senior men’s national team – a role he served for two years till 2021.
After his spell as a manager of the Chinese national team, Li Tie was a top target for Chinese prosecutors, who were clamping down on corruption in Chinese football.
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He was arrested for allegedly ‘accepting and offering bribes’ to fix matches and also aid promotions to his choice clubs.
After his arrest, the former Everton and Premier League star confessed to paying a huge bribe of £330,000 to secure China’s national team job.
Lie Tie (middle) in action for Everton
In his confession, the 46-year-old apologized for following the wrong path and pandering to anomalies in Chinese football that were commonplace at the time.
“I’m very sorry. I should have kept my head to the ground and followed the right path. There were certain things that at the time were common practices in football,” he said.
According to Chinese journalist, Mark Dreyer, Li Tie has been sentenced to a lifetime behind bars for football corruption.
Li Tie was thrust into the spotlights as one of the brightest Chinese football youngsters when he signed for Everton in 2002 on loan. He was a regular in David Moyes’s Everton squad and was signed permanently the next year.
However, his burgeoning career in the English elite division suffered a setback after his career-ending injury while on duty with China’s national team.
He left Everton in 2006 and had a short spell with Sheffield United before calling time in his career.
