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Report: Chinese Super League plans approach for referee Clattenburg

Lee Smith / Reuters

Carlos Tevez, Oscar, Hulk, Jackson Martinez, Ezequiel Lavezzi, Mark Clattenburg.

While the Premier League referee's name doesn't exactly fit in among the legion of international stars that have chased the riches of the Chinese Super League, he has been identified as a potential major coup for world football's most ambitious division, according to The Mirror's John Cross.

Clattenburg, who has overseen an FA Cup, Champions League, and European Championship final in 2016, was the recipient of an award recognising him as the best referee in the world at Dubai's World Soccer Awards on Tuesday. The prize apparently further encouraged the Chinese representatives in attendance to try and tempt the County Durham native to East Asia.

It's a different tact from what's occurred so far. Many big-name footballers have signed contracts in China, encouraged by the vast sums offered at the behest of the country's president Xi Jinping, but the standard of the division is some way short of the quality of the leagues that those players departed. With better officials and administrators, this may go some way to making the competition appear more legitimate in other corners of the globe, and subsequently run with greater professionalism after previous years were blighted by corruption scandals and match fixing.

Recent lucrative transfers include last week's £60-million switch of Oscar from Chelsea to Shanghai SIPG, with Tevez expected to sign a world-record £615,000-a-week deal by the start of the new Chinese football season in February.

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