Will justice brandish a red card to Benjamin Mendy?

Accused of eight rapes, an attempted rape and a sexual assault in England, the trial of the football world champion opens Wednesday in Chester, far from the lawns where the French had a turbulent career.

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.

He is on trial alongside another man, Louis Saha Matturie, prosecuted for eight rapes and four sexual assaults on eight women between July 2012 and August 2021. The latter also pleaded not guilty.

Winner of the 2018 World Cup 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.

Released in early January, he was placed under judicial supervision pending trial.

Off the pitch since August 2021

Mendy has not played a single football match since August 15, 2021 with his Manchester City club, which suspended him when the case started.

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.

On the field, he is a powerful left-back, focused on attack and dangerous in percussion, even if he sometimes struggles to control his weight and experiences a few periods of physical poor shape, negligence regularly noted by his coaches.

A player never indisputable at the Blues

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 more care of his body", the pique besides the coach Didier Deschamps in November 2019, when he reminded 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 lining for Lucas Hernandez.

Trained in Le Havre before a stint in Marseille (2013-2016), preamble to his triumphant season in Monaco, Mendy ultimately never managed to break into the French team: he has only 10 selections in the blue jersey, only one since 2018. Four years later, the laughing smile of Moscow has given way to the grin of courtrooms in the west of England.

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