HANOI, Jan. 3 (Xinhuanet) -- The head coach of Vietnam's Pjico Song Lam Nghe An soccer club, who allegedly involved in fixing both national and international games, has been fired on a temporary basis by the club's management board.

    The board explained Tuesday that the dismissal would help the coach, Nguyen Huy Thang, focus time on working sessions with local police over the match-rigging allegations. If Thang is found innocent, the club will offer him the coach post again.

    Local media on Tuesday reported that according to different sources, Thang asked two members of the club and the national U-23 soccer team at the 23rd Southeast Asian (SEA) Games, Le Quoc Vuongand Pham Van Quyen, to fix a qualification match against Myanmar held in the Philippines in November 2005.

    Local police have detained Vuong for the charge of gambling andorganizing gambling, while Quyen, Vietnam's 2003 Golden Ball winner, for the charge of gambling only. Vuong confessed that he wooed several teammates to rig the match. Their poor performance on purpose resulted a 1-0 victory in favor of Vietnam as expected by local bookmakers.

    Besides Vuong and Quyen, the police have detained two other members of the national U-23 soccer team.

    In addition to the allegation over rigging the SEA Games match,Thang faced another allegation over fixing a game at the 2000-2001national tournament, helping his club gain the championship title.At that time, he was the club's assistant coach.

    Vietnam is launching an iron-fist campaign to cleanse its soccer of wrongdoings. Since August 2005, local police have uncovered some 50 local corrupt referees, as well as managing directors and coaches of some clubs.

    To date, 19 out of 60 local referees and teams' officials who have allegedly involved in match-fixing over the past two years have been prosecuted. Of the men, five have been detained. Enditem