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The 27-year-old’s trial was due to start on July 25, but will finally start on August 10 in Chester. The 28-year-old footballer is accused by seven women and denies the ten charges, which relate to events that allegedly took place between October 2018 and August 2021 at his home in Prestbury, Cheshire. The 2018 world champion pleaded not guilty late last spring.
Winner of the 2018 World Cup in Russia with the France team, where he played the role of good comrade if not one of the key players, Benjamin Mendy left the lawns for almost a year. for the dock and prison cells in Liverpool and Manchester, where he spent more than four months, from August 2021 to January 2022, in pre-trial detention.
Ascending trajectory before the fall
Released in early January, he was placed under judicial supervision pending trial. Mendy has not played a single football match since August 15, 2021 with his Manchester City club, which suspended him when the case started. His co-accused, Louis Saha Matturie – unrelated to former footballer Louis Saha – is being prosecuted for eight rapes and four sexual assaults on eight women between July 2012 and August 2021. He also pleaded not guilty.
The career of the native of Longjumeau, in the Paris region, had however, until then, followed an upward trajectory, with a long-term contract in one of the best European clubs, Manchester City, a world title with the France team. , but also several trophies in England and a surprise victory in Ligue 1 in 2017 with AS Monaco and his Monegasque partner Kylian Mbappé. Upon his arrival at City, Mendy was considered one of the great French and world prospects at left-back. The Citizens had paid 52 million pounds (about 61.4 million euros at the current price) to secure his services.
Physical glitches
But the physical glitches, above all, caught up with him in his early twenties, between a serious right knee injury before the 2018 World Cup, an operation on the left four months later, then another meniscus affected in early 2019. I do not despair “that he” take better care of your body “, also piques the French coach Didier Deschamps in November 2019, when he reminds the Blues of the one to whom he had granted only about forty minutes of play during the epic of the Tricolors in Russia, in 2018, as a stunt double for Lucas Hernandez. Mendy will never have succeeded in breaking into the France team: he has only 10 selections in the blue jersey, only one since 2018.
Apart from the physical glitches, Mendy, trained in Le Havre, and passed through Marseille, had made the front page of the English tabloids in 2020, when his Lamborghini was seized, driving without a license or insurance.
(with AFP)
