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following the 7-0 defeat to japan, the chinese men's football team was reversed 2-1 by the saudi team when they were one man short, suffering two consecutive defeats in the round of 18 of the world cup qualifiers.

coincidentally, on the morning of the men's football match against saudi arabia, the general administration of sport of china and the ministry of public security jointly held a press conference on the special crackdown on "fake gambling and black" in the football professional league, and reported on the handling of as many as 83 people involved in the case. among them are former shandong taishan football club players jin jingdao and guo tianyu, former jiangsu suning football club player gu chao, former shanghai shenhua football club player sun shilin and other well-known club players.

image source: xinhua news agency.

previously, more than 10 middle and senior level officials in the football field have been dismissed, including li tie, former head coach of the chinese national men's football team, chen xuyuan, former deputy secretary of the party committee and chairman of the chinese football association, and du zhaocai, former deputy director of the general administration of sport of china and former secretary of the party committee of the chinese football association.

judging from the results of the special rectification, corruption in the professional football league has become a very deep phenomenon.as the documentary said, "there is systemic and widespread corruption in football."the head coach, players, referees, and senior executives of the football association are all deeply implicated. comparing this with the intricate connection with the national team selection, it also provides a footnote to the "unreliable men's football" to a certain extent.

in the 30th year of professional football in china, the intersection of these two pieces of news undoubtedly makes people feel complicated.it has been just over a decade since the last large-scale anti-gambling and anti-gangster campaign in football, but the corruption situation is even worse than before.

on october 16, 2009, former guangdong eagles boss zhong guojian was taken into custody by police, marking the start of the last anti-gambling and anti-gangster campaign in chinese football.

the same thing happened: yang xu, an official of the guangzhou football association, several former guangzhou club executives, fan guangming, an official of the football association, ding zhe, a former coach of jinde, and then nan yong, the head of chinese football at the time, and his partner yang yimin, as well as zhang jianqiang, the former director of the referee committee. during the same period, xie yalong, the former head of chinese football, was also investigated for suspected match-fixing, commercial bribery and other crimes, along with li dongsheng, the director of the referee committee, and wei shaohui, the former head of the national football team.

on february 23, 2010, wang xiaoping, director of the disciplinary committee of the chinese football association, announced the punishment decision on three clubs involved in match-fixing at a press conference. photo courtesy xinhua news agency.

at that time, the amount involved in the case of xie yalong, nan yong and yang yimin exceeded 1.3 million yuan, 1.48 million yuan and 1.25 million yuan respectively, and they were all sentenced to 10 years and 6 months in prison.

ten years later, the chinese men's football team has not only failed to rise from the ashes, but has fallen further. the amount of money involved in the case of chen xuyuan, the former chairman of the football association, is even ten times that of that year.

looking back at the famous quotes he shouted during his tenure, such as "football is a noble sport. don't let money taint or distort it," it is really full of irony.

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what is so special about football that makes corruption such a thorn in the flesh and so difficult to eradicate?

from the cases, we can roughly sort out several factors.

first is the mentality of seeking quick success and instant benefits. football is the most influential sport in the world, with the largest audience. once successful, players and coaches will gain huge prestige and various explicit or implicit benefits. this is also true in china, and to some extent, it may be even more so than in foreign countries.

when the desire to win overwhelms everything, all kinds of deformed and distorted actions come into being, not to mention that there is indeed a lot of room for maneuver.li tie, the former head coach of the chinese men's football team who was dismissed for corruption, led his team to promotion to the chinese super league twice by fixing matches and paying off the opposing coaches and players to "let the game go", which indeed brought him great results. all these accumulated capital for him to become the head coach of the chinese men's football team.

the unsound market environment also provides soil for football corruption. in particular, the underground football betting market has become an important reason for the emergence of "fake betting and corruption" in professional football. a soul-searching question is: when players can earn huge profits far higher than the income from normal matches through match-fixing on the field, why wouldn't they do it? there are even clubs that use the funds earned from match-fixing to pay salaries and bonuses to players, forming an industrial chain.

behind this is an unbreakable chain of interests. in the anti-corruption feature film of the central commission for discipline inspection, chen xuyuan said something meaningful:"corruption in chinese football is not limited to one aspect, but is comprehensive."

judging from the cases, football corruption is often difficult to accomplish with just a few people, and usually requires "multi-party cooperation", from players, coaches, referees to managers, etc., all of which may be key links in the corruption interest chain, and in many cases, none of them can be missing. this is also the reason why the characteristics of systematic and catastrophic corruption in the football field are more obvious.

what is even more ironic is that when everyone joins the game, the one who keeps himself clean becomes the odd one out. especially when the management directly influences the referee's decision, the clubs that abide by the rules become victims, forcing them to join the ranks of bribery in order to seek relatively fair decisions, thus forming a vicious cycle of corruption.

ultimately, all corruption is essentially the result of a lack of supervision and restriction of power.during the investigation, the task force discovered that although the football association is only a social organization, it actually controls enormous public resources and public power. what is more, these public powers lack effective supervision and constraints, and league management often fails to distinguish between management and operation for a long time. the football association is both a regulator and an organizer, leaving huge room for rent-seeking.

in this context, it is almost inevitable that people will make a living from football. as one netizen joked:if the right to rain was given to a person selling umbrellas, do you think there would still be sunny days?

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against this background, anti-corruption in chinese football and the subsequent issue of professional development are actually long-term issues.

the latest round of anti-corruption storm in football is more powerful and determined than before, which is equivalent to once again clearly demonstrating the country's "zero tolerance" attitude and means, which will bring considerable warning and deterrent effects. the so-called scraping the bone to cure the poison will certainly have its positive significance.

but to meet the expectations of fans, an anti-corruption storm is probably not enough to solve the institutional problems. capital is not the fundamental reason why the chinese men's football team has been performing poorly for many years.

to put it bluntly, the deep connection between football and market capital, both at home and abroad, is nothing new. this is precisely an important driving force for the development of this sport.the professionalization and industrialization of sports are often two sides of the same coin, and neither can be missing. this is especially true in the field of football. in this regard, the english premier league and other foreign professional leagues are good examples.

it is predicted that by 2025, the total scale of china's sports industry will exceed 5 trillion yuan. based on the 40% share of football in the international sports industry, it is expected that the scale of china's football industry will exceed 2 trillion yuan in 2025.

if we blame corruption in football on capital, or even label football's market-oriented reform as "money football", we are completely hitting the wrong target. putting all the blame on "capital" will only blur the real problem.

capital is not the problem, but the collusion between capital and power is the root of the problem. if this problem is not solved, power-for-money transactions and the phenomenon of "corruption from one generation to the next" will continue to happen.the reason why the root cause is difficult to cure is precisely because the market-oriented reform of the league system is not thorough enough and the degree of de-bureaucratization of football management is not enough, not the other way around.

according to the relevant plans for the reform and development of chinese football, in the future, further deepening the market-oriented reform of football and effectively promoting social and market-run football will still be a path that must be taken.this has been said countless times, it is nothing more than common sense, that is, let professionals do professional things.

what to do after anti-corruption and how to make capital factors truly play their role of invigorating professional football require deeper attention.