{"id":11463,"date":"2010-09-05T13:29:39","date_gmt":"2010-09-05T20:29:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/2010\/09\/05\/chinese-officials-deserve-iran-snub-soccer-chief\/"},"modified":"2010-09-05T13:29:39","modified_gmt":"2010-09-05T20:29:39","slug":"chinese-officials-deserve-iran-snub-soccer-chief","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/2010\/09\/05\/chinese-officials-deserve-iran-snub-soccer-chief\/","title":{"rendered":"Chinese officials deserve Iran snub: soccer chief"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"float: right;\" alt=\"ChinaPlayerSad\" src=\"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/07\/ChinaPlayerSad.jpg\" height=\"250\" width=\"370\" \/>Reuters &#8211; BEIJING, <strong>Iran&#8217;s demand for a neutral referee for their friendly against China  this week is disrespectful but local match officials only have  themselves to blame, according to China&#8217;s soccer chief Wei Di.<\/strong><span id=\"midArticle_byline\"><\/span> <span id=\"midArticle_0\"><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Three top Chinese referees were arrested for their involvement in  a major match-fixing scandal earlier this year and Wei said he thought  that was behind Iran&#8217;s request for a non-Chinese to officiate the match  in Zhengzhou on Friday.<\/p>\n<p><span id=\"midArticle_1\"><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It is not too odd in principle, but objectively it shows their  lack of respect for Chinese referees,&#8221; Wei told a training camp for  referees in Hebei on Wednesday in speech reported by the Xinhua news  agency.<\/p>\n<p><span id=\"midArticle_2\"><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Wei was brought in to clean up Chinese soccer after his  predecessor Nan Yong and a strong of other top Chinese Football  Association (CFA) officials were arrested for corruption.<\/p>\n<p><span id=\"midArticle_3\"><\/span><\/p>\n<p>One of the referees arrested in March was 2002 World Cup official  Lu Jun, who had been known as the &#8220;golden whistle&#8221; in contrast to the  corrupt &#8220;black whistles&#8221; who had long been suspected of fixing matches  over the last decade.<\/p>\n<p><span id=\"midArticle_4\"><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Wei conceded that many guilty referees had fixed matches at the  behest of CFA officials and so earned the nickname &#8220;official whistles&#8221;  but said that must now stop if they were to gain credibility with fans  and players.<\/p>\n<p><span id=\"midArticle_5\"><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The CFA must start within itself to eliminate the &#8216;official  whistle&#8217;,&#8221; he said. &#8220;And the referees must resist the pressure of  &#8216;official whistle&#8217;. A referee must immediately report to the CFA as soon  as any CFA official makes such request.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><span id=\"midArticle_6\"><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Wei, who has declined Iran&#8217;s request, then called on domestic  referees to deliberately make calls against Chinese players in matches  against other countries.<\/p>\n<p><span id=\"midArticle_7\"><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;In international games, the Chinese referees should be more  strict to China, which could improve the team&#8217;s mentality in a negative  situations,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Reuters &#8211; BEIJING, Iran&#8217;s demand for a neutral referee for their friendly against China this&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22614,"featured_media":11382,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[86],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11463","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-c13-team-melli-news"],"views":3488,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11463","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22614"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11463"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11463\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11382"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11463"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11463"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11463"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}