{"id":53549,"date":"2023-03-19T00:00:13","date_gmt":"2023-03-18T15:00:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2023\/mar\/18\/chinese-stars-officials-held-xi-jinping-football-corruption-crackdown"},"modified":"2023-03-19T00:00:13","modified_gmt":"2023-03-18T15:00:13","slug":"chinese-football-stars-and-officials-held-in-xis-corruption-crackdown","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=53549","title":{"rendered":"Chinese football stars and officials held in Xi\u2019s corruption crackdown"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Stadiums are reopening but detentions of major football figures overshadow the sport, as scandal engulfs basketball<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p>Sergio Ag\u00fcero may be one of the greatest strikers of his generation, but he won an even rarer accolade in 2015, when he became the first \u2013 and last \u2013 Premier League footballer to take a selfie with Xi Jinping, China\u2019s football-loving leader.<\/p>\n<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.independent.co.uk\/sport\/football\/premier-league\/sergio-aguero-selfie-manchester-city-striker-pictured-with-david-cameron-and-chinese-president-xi-jinping-a6705981.html\" title=\"\">photo<\/a>, taken at Manchester City\u2019s stadium \u2013 with then prime minister David Cameron \u2013 comes from an era when Xi was fostering warm relations with the UK and pushing China to become a world football superpower by 2050, both ambitions that seem distant possibilities today.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2023\/mar\/18\/chinese-stars-officials-held-xi-jinping-football-corruption-crackdown\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Stadiums are reopening but detentions of major football figures overshadow the sport, as scandal engulfs basketballSergio Ag\u00fcero may be one of the greatest strikers of his generation, but he won an even rarer accolade in 2015, when he became the first &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3580,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[41,2313,50,627,203,912,42,49],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-53549","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-asia-pacific","category-basketball","category-china","category-football","category-sport","category-sport-politics","category-world-news","category-xi-jinping"],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53549","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3580"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=53549"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53549\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53550,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53549\/revisions\/53550"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=53549"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=53549"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=53549"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}