Man City cult hero Sun Jihai is now business mogul and talk show host worth £20million
FORMER Man City defender Sun Jihai is now a businessman and talk show host worth £20MILLION.
The ex-China international, 45, spent six years in the blue half of Manchester between 2002 and 2008.
He played 130 times for City, helping them return to the top flight during his first six months at the club.
He also made history at Man City by becoming the first Chinese player to score in the Premier League.
Jihai went on to spend a season with Sheffield United in the Championship as City sold him following their 2008 takeover.
He enjoyed seven more years playing back in China, accumulating 80 caps for his country, before eventually hanging up his boots in 2016.
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But he has arguably had more success since retiring from football.
Jihai co-founded a sports data company, HaiQui Sports [HQ], in the year he retired from the game.
The organisation, which he formed with Beijing Renhe, set out to offer sports media, technology and "datatainment".
This manifested itself in Jihai hosting a talk show in which he promoted sports social media app MiaoHi - which connects celebrities to fans - and "match prediction tool" Jihai App.
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It saw him attract a "multi-million dollar" investments from China Media Capital - who had already purchased a 13 per cent stake in City Football Group - along with Tencent and the Yuan Xu Fund.
MiaoHi was Jihai's main product which brought in the investment, with the app boasting 2,000 celebrities on the platform at the time.
Since then it has become incredibly popular and is now used by 400 million people.
The expansion was helped by the Chinese national football team using the app to stream content during their 2018 World Cup qualification campaign.
The business ventures have seen Jihai accumulate a wealth of £20m, according to .
He remains in football as a vice chairman of the FA in the Xinjiang region.
And Jihai recently spoke out against the increased number of foreign managers in the Chinese Super League.
Following Slaven Bilic's appointment at Beijing Guoan in 2021, he said: "Foreign coaches come to China for a very simple purpose: a pay check.
"Otherwise what are they coming for? Do they want to improve the level of Chinese soccer? Then what have they done?"