Li Tie vs. Sun Jihai: The most-watched English soccer match in China

Less than a year after failing to get China to the Qatar 2022 FIFA World Cup, men’s national team head coach Lǐ Tiě 李铁 — a former star in his playing days — hit a new low: he found himself under investigation for “serious violations” of the law. (The specifics of his case are still unknown, but speculation online is that he took bribes from sponsors.)

Li Tie’s arrest was sudden, but it was by no means shocking: another addition to China’s long list of soccer disappointments. The sport has a tarnished reputation in China, with countless examples of corruption scandals, match fixing, and bad sportsmanship. This month marks 10 years since the Chinese Football Association punished 12 clubs and 58 current and former soccer officials, players, and referees for match-fixing and bribery.

The men’s team has tried to make it to every World Cup since rejoining the global community with FIFA membership in 1979, starting with the 1982 tournament in Spain. Last year marked its fifth failure in six tries. If there is one thing that can bring Chinese people together, it’s the disappointment of the men’s national team.

But that wasn’t always the case.

There was a time when soccer was looked at through rosier glasses in China, and Li Tie — referred to as “China’s David Beckham” — played a major role during his days as a midfielder at English Premier League side Everton. Together with Sūn Jìhǎi 孙继海, who played at rivals Manchester City, they were arguably two of the biggest rising stars in the world.

They were both on the 2002 national team that participated in China’s lone World Cup. The team lost all three of their games in the tournament, but it was nonetheless exciting. It was a starting point, and for Chinese fans things could only go up. When Li Tie and Sun Jihai were signed on by the English Premier League, English broadcasters suddenly found their viewership had expanded across the pond — especially on January 1, 2003, when Li Tie and Sun Jihai went head to head in what became known as the “Chinese derby.”

“Most-watched football match outside of a World Cup”

The scene: Everton, sitting fifth and chasing a UEFA Champions League spot, welcomes Man City, sitting ninth. Kick-off is 3 p.m. local time, 11 p.m. in Beijing. Chinese fans tune in to watch their country’s finest footballers go head to head.

“Sun and Li are the two best Chinese players in the world,” Manchester City boss Kevin Keegan said before the game. The Times said the match “promises to be the most-watched football match outside of a World Cup.” It was reported that 100 journalists and executives traveled from China to Liverpool, while at least one dedicated fan was pictured in an Everton shirt with a China flag and China cap in the Goodison Park stands.

Some 330 million had watched China play Brazil in the 2002 FIFA World Cup. The “Chinese derby” was watched by 360 million, “nearly double the previous record,” according to the Manchester Evening News, while the Liverpool Echo reported 365 million had tuned in.

Everton secured a 2-2 draw thanks to striker and winger Tomasz Radzinksi scoring an equalizer in the 93rd minute. While Keegan said Everton deserved credit for sticking with it, “the same might be said for those viewers yawning from Beijing to Xi’an,” concluded the Guardian. But Chinese fans actually had something to cheer for — more than usual while watching men’s soccer, anyway. Sun had set up Marc Vivien Foe to put City up 2-1 with seven minutes to go, while it was Li who assisted Radzkinski at the death.

Sun was already first choice, but for Li Tie, the game cemented his position in the Everton side. His arrival had been labeled a publicity stunt, and writing about him often happened in the context of viewership. “Since the arrival in August of the China player,” the Independent wrote ahead of the January 1 game, “Everton can claim even larger global support than Manchester United. They are now the most popular football team in the world’s most populous country and it is just about to get bigger.” “More would tune in if Everton played their two Chinese in the Premiership,” Mǎ Déxiīng 马德兴, a famed journalist for Chinese sports newspaper Sports Weekly, said about Li and fellow Chinese signing Lǐ Wěifēng 李玮峰. Both had arrived from Chinese club Liaoning Bird as part of a deal partly funded by Everton’s new sponsor, the Shenzhen-based mobile phone manufacturer Kejian.

But the same could not be said for the fortunes of Chinese soccer. The New Year’s Day 2003 game marked two years since a “White Paper on China’s Football” attempted to reform the game, but the reforms and hopeful energy of the early 2000s began to fade into bitter disappointment with every loss. Sun and Li’s careers abroad were also met with hardship.

Li’s Everton stay was blighted by injuries, limiting him to a handful of appearances the following season. He broke his leg while on China duty in February 2004 and had to sit out a year for club and country. China was knocked out of 2006 World Cup qualifying when it lost to Kuwait in October 2004, a game that Li was not active for.

He barely appeared for Everton again before signing with Sheffield United in 2006. He returned to China in 2008 with the Chengdu Blades, spending one season with Sheffield United’s Chinese affiliate. Li would later win China League One with hometown team Liaoning in 2009, before another injury the following campaign forced him to retire.

​​Sun also had his battles with injury, which saw him miss the 2004-05 season. After winning his spot back in the starting lineup, he got injured again, and sat out a chunk of the 2006-07 campaign. Sven Goran Eriksson’s arrival as City boss in 2007 would be the end of Sun’s stint; he moved to Sheffield United in the summer of 2008 in the Championship. His time with the Chinese national team ended in June 2008 after a bizarre incident where he was sent off against Qatar while sitting on the bench.

He lasted just a season at Sheffield before moving on loan to Chengdu Blades, though the team was relegated as part of a match-fixing scandal. He landed at Shaanxi Chanba, where he stayed as it became Guizhou Renhe and then Beijing Renhe. Sun retired after the end of the 2016 season at Beijing Renhe.

China’s sputtering football dream

When Chinese president Xí Jìnpíng 习近平 visited the UK the winter of 2015, he went to Manchester City’s training complex and saw Sun Jihai inducted into the English Football Hall of Fame. Weeks later, Beijing-based China Media Capital invested $400 million for a 13 percent stake in the City Football Group — money well spent, given the club’s success since. This remains one of the few remaining Chinese investments in European football.

That trip led to Xi announcing his dream of China becoming a “world football superpower” by 2050. That looks as far off as ever. Chinese football has continued to struggle on and off the pitch, with few following in the footsteps of Li and Sun overseas. Andy Hosie, Everton’s head of marketing, told The Times before the New Year’s Day Chinese Derby that “there must be 10 David Beckhams in China that have just never been found.” They remain unfound.

It’s the result of years of neglect. Traveling players had brought back reports of youth teams with better equipment, jerseys, and strategy since the late-’70s, but Chinese officials dismissed them, perhaps because they couldn’t bring themselves to believe just how far behind China had fallen after decades of isolation. China has lagged behind in terms of youth participation in sports: in 2011, the Chinese Football Association had only 7,000 registered young players aged 13 to 18. Japan, by contrast, had 600,000, and France had 1.46 million. There’s a variety of reasons for this, from conflict between academics and athletics to a lack of investment resulting in poor training facilities that did little to encourage parents to indulge their children’s soccer dreams.

Sun Jihai — once described as “the pride of the 1.2 billion Chinese people” by the Asian Football Confederation’s official website after becoming the first Chinese player to score in the English Premier League in September 2002 — has certainly been luckier than his friend and former China teammate Li Tie. He played until the age of 39, and has been savvy since hanging up his boots.

As well as remaining one of the most famous footballers in the country’s history, reports suggest that he is an astute businessman. His HQ Sport and accompanying app, which he founded before retiring, has earned him a $24 million fortune, thanks to investment from the likes of China Media Capital. Sun has also been the vice president of the Xinjiang Football Association; the province won a silver medal in the men’s under-20 football tournament at the 2021 China National Games.

Li Tie, however, has fallen hard, another name in the long list of Chinese soccer coaches, players, and investors who have engaged in unethical behaviors, whether it be fixing games or failing to pay players. He has since been replaced by Lǐ Xiāopéng 李霄鹏, who himself has struggled. Under his leadership, China suffered a humiliating 3-1 loss to Vietnam in February 2022 that ended its World Cup qualifying campaign.

Not long ago, Sun Jihai has become part of the coaching staff and even led training for the national team last March. Only time will tell if Sun can help to change the fortunes of Chinese men’s football.

History is not on his side.