Chinese authorities have ordered tighter supervision of local football leagues and an investigation into alleged match-fixing following a defeat suffered by an under-15s team from the youth academy of distressed property developer Evergrande.
Evergrande founder Hui Ka Yan in 2012 built one of the world’s largest residential football academies in Qingyuan in southern China’s Guangdong province with the help of coaches from Spanish club Real Madrid.
But the implosion of the highly indebted Evergrande property group has left the academy beset with financial issues over the past 12 months and Chinese media have reported that it has been losing teachers and students.