Head admits to cheating to win soccer tournament

By Guo Kai

The headmaster of a school in Chongqing Municipality apologized yesterday for fielding ineligible players to win the World Middle School Football Championships for girls held in Turkey earlier this month.

"Just three of the 18 players were students from the school. The rest were from other parts of the country," Zhang Jianling, head of Chongqing Daping Middle School, said at a press conference.

Reading from a written apology, Zhang said that although his school was not known for its girls' soccer, he was asked in February to prepare a team for the competition. Keen to impress, he said he decided to recruit players from across the country but did not inform the local authorities.

The Chongqing "dream team" entered the contest and lifted the winners' trophy on April 12 after beating a team from Germany 8-6 in a penalty shoot-out.

Two days after the win, local media reported the scandal, saying that several national youth team players had been drafted into the team.

News of the less than noble victory was met with several sarcastic comments online.
"It's great that China's professional players were able to win a world championship – a middle school world championship," Elaine Chow wrote in an article published on Shanghaiist.com.

Education officials launched an investigation into the cheating allegation after the story made headlines on several websites.

"The scandal has weakened the image of the country, the municipality and the school, and will have a detrimental impact on students' moral education The school thanks the media and the public for supervising the case," the apology letter said.

Also at the conference, Zhao Yuanzheng, director of the Yuzhong Education Commission, said Zhang had been "given a demerit according to the Regulation on the Punishment of Civil Servants of Administrative Organs."

Neither Zhang nor Zhao took questions after the announcement.

The Chongqing municipal government has urged the school to immediately return the trophy to the organizers of the championship.

Despite Zhang's admission, not everyone is convinced that he is the only person to blame for the incident.

A post on 163.com questioned how he had managed to recruit members of the national youth team so easily, saying Zhang is "just another scapegoat in the beleaguered world of Chinese football."