Qingdao manager Liu Hongwei has been charged with accepting bribes to throw a match against Chengdu Blades in 2007, which helped the English-owned Sichuan club win promotion to the country's top flight.
Liu, whose arrest with Chengdu president Xu Hongtao and deputy You Kewei was reported in state media on Friday, said it might not have been obvious to the untrained eye that the match was fixed.
"The professionals might be able to see the flaws," Liu said in an interview with state-run CCTV. "But the professionals would have already known about many of these kinds of things in Chinese football. They are normal."
"The playing standard of Chinese football is so poor that, even without us defending, they could not score a goal (in the first half). They were too anxious," Liu said.
"Match-fixing is not that obvious," he said. "We sent on young substitutes, who were truly incapable. Even then it did not look that inconsistent (with normal standards)."
"The players belonged to the club," Liu said. "They had to follow our arrangement."
