GUANGZHOU, Nov 19 Police in south China have arrested an Internet blogger for threatening to bomb the national football team after he lost a wager on one of their Asian Games matches, state press said on Friday.

The man, identified only by his surname Lin, was arrested in Guangxi province after police traced his Internet threat to an apartment in the city of Beihai, China National Radio reported.

Lin threatened to use explosives to blow up the team after it beat Kazakhstan 2-1 last week, the report said.“I bet 70,000 yuan ($10,600) on football, this was the first time I had bet that China's national team would lose to its opponent,” the report quoted the Internet posting as saying. “The 70,000 yuan would have been more than enough to buy a coffin for the national Olympic team,” it said.Lin was sentenced to three-day administrative detention on Wednesday after police concluded he had not made any effort to carry out the threat, the report said. Also, Lin had only lost 500 yuan on the bet, not 70,000 yuan, it added.

The Chinese team received a drubbing in state media after failing to advance past the round of 16 here, while suffering humiliating losses to arch-rivals Japan and South Korea. —AFP