Trials resume for football officials accused of corruption. This time, the suspects are former Vice-chief of the Chinese Football Association, Xie Yalong, and the former manager of the national team Yu Shaohui.

The mood is tense outside the Intermediate People's Court in Dandong. 56-year-old Xie Yalong faces 12 charges of bribery. The sums involved, amount of over 1.7 million yuan.

Xie Yalong said, "I do admit my crimes but I'm not a corruptive official."

Xie Yalong took over the Chinese Football Association in 2005. But the national football team performed poorly, and so three years later he was forced to quit. During a series of investigations into match-fixing and gambling in 2010, Xie Yalong and other officials were taken into custody. But he says it is the football culture that is to blame, not the individuals.

Xie Yalong said, "I was sitting in a position where I had to take care of the interests of many others. I had to take their money, or else, they would think I didn't want to build up connections with them."

And he's not the only one to take this line of defense. Yu Shaohui is the former manager of the National Football Team. During a police investigation, football players admitted giving money to Yu Shaohui to improve their chances of playing in a match.

Yu said, "There was a football player who worked very hard but didn't get even a minute on the pitch in over eight months. He came to me when I was having lunch with friends and gave me a hundred thousand yuan."

This player was then selected to play in the next game. Yet Yu Shaohui claims he accepted the money as a gift without realizing it was a bribe.

China's huge football scandal started in 2009. Police discovered that a match in Singapore had been fixed. Their investigation has led to the highest levels of the football league. Dozens of officials, referees and players have since been arrested. The first trial opened in December 2011.

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