Man City cult hero is now worth £20 million after huge career change

A former Manchester City player who played in the club's humiliating 8-1 defeat to Middlesbrough is now worth £20 million.

On 11 May 2008, City were trounced by Middlesbrough at the Riverside Stadium. Richard Dunne was sent off early on and Afonso Alves bagged a hat-trick in Sven Goran Eriksson's final game in charge.

Sun Jihai was one of the City defenders who shipped eight goals on Teesside and it also proved to be his last game for the club as he then signed for Sheffield United.

The 45-year-old made 123 appearances in the Premier League and was the first East Asian footballer to score in the division.

The former China international, capped 80 times, retired back in December 2016 but he had already prepared for life after football in a huge way.

Earlier that year, he co-founded sports data company, HaiQui Sports [HQ] with Beijing Renhe.

The company, which has more than 100 staff, specialises in sports media, technology and data services and Sun apparently hosted a talk show to promote the business.

HQ's major selling point was the release of a sports social media app called MiaoHi - which helped fans connect with more than 2,000 celebrities.

Image: Alamy

Earlier this year, The Sun reported that 400 million people were using the app, with the China national team streaming content on there during their bid to qualify for the 2018 World Cup.

The buzz surrounding the app was so strong that "multi-million dollar" investments from China Media Capital, Tencent and the Yuan Xu Fund came in.

And as a result, Jihai has done incredibly well financially as a result. PeopleWorthWiki say he has a wealth of £20 million after making some shrewd post-football decisions.

"I was thinking about creating the company in November 2015 and the company was formed in February 2016 - the decision was taken quite quickly,” he told the Daily Star in 2017.

"It would be rather difficult for your average footballer to enter the technology sector. I was fortunate to have friends and partners who know about technology and other similar areas."

Jihai is still involved in football as he serves as vice chairman of the FA in the Xinjiang region of China.