HANOI, Sept 15: The former vice captain of Vietnam’s under-23 football team, Le Quoc Vuong, has been suspended for five years for fixing an international match, state media said on Saturday.

“This decision was officially announced on Thursday by the VFF and it came immediately in force,” said the Communist Party daily Nhan Dan, referring to the Vietnam Football Federation by its acronym.

It added that Vuong was fined ten million dongs (620 dollars).

Vuong was jailed in January for six years for rigging Vietnam’s under-23 match against Myanmar at the 2005 Southeast Asian Games in return for cash from a betting syndicate.

His sentence was cut to four years in April by an appeal court.

He was found guilty of organising the scam and bribing his fellow players with 1,250 dollars to give less than their full effort in a match against Myanmar in Manila that Vietnam won 1-0.

Six other players, including a 22-year-old star striker Pham Van Quyen, are now serving suspended terms.

Football betting and other forms of gambling, and match fixing, are illegal but widespread in the communist nation where police and the VFF’s officials are trying to clean up Vietnamese football.

In July, nine Vietnamese referees and football officials were given jail terms of up to seven years after being found guilty of taking and giving bribes to fix matches in Vietnam’s domestic V-League season 2004-2005.—AFP