8 Football Teams Who Were Stripped Of Their League Titles

In the age of the modern Chinese Super League we mostly know Shanghai Shenhua as a club willing to throw big money at luring fading stars from European leagues, with players including Didier Drogba, Nicolas Anelka, and Carlos Tevez all turning out for the Flower of Shanghai in the 2010s. Back in the 2000s, though, they were more content to just throw that money at the ref instead.

For the final season of China's old A-League (the professional league before the creation of the current Super League), Shenhua were locked in a race to the top with local rivals Shanghai International. A crucial 4-1 victory in the clash between the two Shanghai clubs was enough, though, to push Shenhua toward title glory.

In 2011, however, it came out that Shenhua's general manager Lou Shifang had been responsible for orchestrating bribes to the referee for the Shanghai derby match, Lu Jun.

Initially, the Chinese authorities were more lenient on these match fixers than they were on some teenage Koreans mucking about with a trophy, choosing not to strip Shenhua of the title and only punish the individuals involved (Lou Shifang having long since left the club).

Then in 2013 they discovered that it was not just a case of bribing that one ref for that one match. With the revelation that Shenhua had also used bribery to fix a match against Shaanxi Guoli, it became clear that any game could have been subject to corrupt tampering. Finally, a decade after it was won, the whole 2003 season was written off with no champion.