Soccer's anti-corruption drive continues, and now another big fish has been arrested, this time in the form of Yu Hongchen, the former vice-chairman of the Football Association (FA) and current director of the Athletic Management Center (AMC). Due to the plethora of negative behaviors of successive CFA officials, many fans may have trouble recalling which of these misdeeds Yu Hongchen was involved in. However, he once slammed the general manager of Shandong Luneng Football Club in a fiercely worded statement that stuck in people's memories.
In 2010, Yu Hongchen joined the Chinese Football Association (CFA). Cai Zhenhua, the president of the CFA at the time, highly valued Yu, and in 2012, Yu was promoted to vice president of the CFA, although he was only a deputy, everyone knew that he was the actual controller of the CFA. Back in 2011, Shandong Luneng and Tianjin Kangshifu played a match against each other. The referee, Ma Ning, made a number of controversial calls during the match, which caused dissatisfaction among the Shandong Luneng team. The then general manager of Luneng FC, Han Gongzheng, went directly to the Football Association to ask for an explanation for this, only to be angrily rebuked by Yu Hongchen: "If you can't afford to play, don't play.""
Guangzhou Evergrande is another team that suffered from Yu Hongchen's unfair penalties when they were just promoted to the Chinese Super League. In the match between Evergrande and Yu's hometown team, Liaozhu, Evergrande also suffered a lot of unfair penalties. The referee was the imperial referee, Ma Ning. After the match, Evergrande FC appealed, but Yu Hongchen made it clear that the appeal was invalid. As time goes by, Evergrande became more aware of the situation. Coupled with their rather impressive performance, they became the FA's favorites. The seven foreign aid policy introduced by Evergrande at that time also became a veritable Evergrande exclusive policy for a while.
Yu Hongchen was arrested, which shows how strong the anti-corruption efforts in soccer are. Not only are there problems now, but those who had problems before can't escape either. Now many problematic FA officials may be trembling at home. Because illegal things will eventually be uncovered, waiting for them will be more severe prosecution. As the People's Daily said, the iron must be traced back to the source, will be investigated to the end, is bound to return to China's soccer a clean slate.
