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Man City’s Mendy pleads not guilty to nine sex offences

AFP

Manchester City and France footballer Benjamin Mendy denied nine sexual offences against six young women as he appeared in court on Monday.

The 27-year-old player stood in the dock at Chester Crown Court and repeated: “Not guilty” as the charges were put to him and he entered pleas for the first time.

The defender denies seven counts of rape, one count of sexual assault and one count of attempted rape, relating to six complainants.

All the alleged offences are said to have taken place at his home address near Macclesfield, northwest England, between October 2018 and August last year.

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Mendy entered his pleas during a hearing on Monday ahead of his trial, scheduled to begin later this year.

He will go before a jury on July 25 along with his co-defendant Louis Saha Matturie, 40, who also entered not guilty pleas to all charges.

Matturie denies eight counts of rape and four counts of sexual assault, relating to eight young women. His alleged offences span from July 2012 to August last year.

After both defendants entered their pleas, the hearing went into private session with press excluded from the courtroom.

Mendy joined Premier League champions City from French club Monaco in 2017. He has played 75 times for the club but his playing time has been limited by injuries and a loss of form.

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The last of his 10 caps for France came in November 2019, after the defender won the World Cup in 2018.

Mendy was suspended by City after being charged by police.

Both defendants are on bail.

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Alcaraz beats Zverev in the final and achieves his first Roland Garros

The Spaniard Carlos Alcaraz won his first crown at Roland Garros and his third Grand Slam, after coming back in the final against the German Alexander Zverev, whom he beat by 6-3, 2-6, 5-7, 6-1 and 6-2 in 4 hours and 19 minutes.

The 21-year-old tennis player, who thanks to this victory will ascend to number 2 in the world, dropped on the clay of the Philippe Chatrier court before ascending to the stands where his team and family were and hugging his grandfather, his parents and siblings.

Alcaraz becomes the tenth Spaniard to win the clay Grand Slam, adds the 26th triumph of Spaniards in Paris and the youngest winner of large trophies on the three surfaces.

In addition, he is the second youngest winner of Roland Garros, behind Rafa Nadal, the only two who have won the tournament before turning 22.

On the day of the region of Murcia, from which the Spanish is originally, Alcaraz won the tournament two years after Nadal lifted the last of his fourteen (2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2019, 2020 and 2022), and inscribes his name on a payroll that Manolo Santana opened in 1961 and that, after renewing it in 1964, was expanded by Andrés Gimeno (1972), Arantxa Sánchez Vicario (1989, 1994 and 1998), Sergi Bruguera (1993 and 1994), Carlos Moyá (1998), Albert Costa (2002), Juan Carlos Ferrero (2003) and Nadal.

Alcaraz himself recognized that Roland Garros is not a tournament like the others when you are Spanish and his victory consecrates him as the banner of the hade born in the new century, which is called to take over from the ‘Big 3’.

Unlike Zverev, who four years after having lost the final in the United States against the Austrian Dominic Thiem after taking two sets up, he again wasted an advantage to score his first Grand Slam.

A hard blow for this representative of the generation of the 90s, encased between the long shadow of the ‘Big 3’ and the strength of those who have been hitting hard.

At 27 years old, he lacked some breath to prevail in the final and finish his extraordinary streak of twelve consecutive victories that he began in the last tournament in Rome, where he added his sixth Masters 1,000.

But this defeat will leave its mark on the German’s mind, by the way it was produced and by the stage, the same one in which in a few months he will seek to renew his Olympic gold.

While Europe was electing its new parliament, Roland Garros was looking for a new king, the year in which the iron one, the one who has a statue that will forever remember his 14 titles, Rafa Nadal, had said goodbye at the age of 38 in the first round and that the only one who has made some shade on the clay, the Serbian Novak Djokovic, had left with an injury at 37.

The fight promised to be of high intensity, because the forecasts were not clearly inclined towards any, like the polls that leave everything to see what the undecided decide at the last minute.

It was very clear to Carlitos, who came from a merciless battle against the Italian Jannik Sinner, the virtual number 1 in the world, from which he emerged victorious by faith and perseverance and who did not seem to want any other suffering.

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Verstappen is not afraid of the rain either and stretches his advantage in Canada for the F1 World Cup

The Dutchman Max Verstappen (Red Bull) redeemed himself from sixth place in Monaco two weeks ago by giving a coup of authority in Canada, where he kept the McLarens and the Mercedes at bay to stretch his advantage for the Formula One World Championship in a ‘crazy’ race due to the rain with five dropouts.

After leaving second on the Gilles Villeneuve circuit, Verstappen allied himself with the rain and race incidents and finished with a four-second advantage over the British Lando Norris (McLaren), who finished second and approached the Monegasque Charles Leclerc (Ferrari) in the World Cup, who like the Spanish Carlos Sainz (Ferrari) and the Mexican ‘Czech’ Pérez (Red Bull), had to leave, while the Spanish Fernando Alonso (Aston Martin) finished sixth.

It was not easy for the three-time world champion, who had to deal with two safety cars, two steps through ‘boxes’ going up positions and the pace of Norris, who wants to sign up for the World Cup party, but the Dutchman met again with the victory expanding his advantage over Leclerc and also with Norris, who despite suffering to the finish line, contained the British George Russell (Mercedes) and the Englishman Lewis Hamilton (Mercedes).

Caution prevailed during the first third of the race. In the rain none of the first four wanted to risk and while Russell started as a leader and was the only one to have clean air, behind the Australian Daniel Ricciardo (Visa Cash App RB) went wrong and lost three positions with a stroke of the pen.

Alonso benefited from it and, from the first turn, he began a battle that lasted for 25 laps with the British Lewis Hamilton (Mercedes), who although he had more race pace, was unable to overtake the two-time world champion, who, however, was overtaken by the Englishman after a bad stop in the Aston Martin garage.

But the battle was ahead. Russell put up with Verstappen, but he couldn’t do anything with the rhythm of the British Lando Norris, who seemed willing to add his second victory and take the taste of the triumph.

Norris warmed up the tires, knew how to take the car on the driest rail of the entire circuit and started to shoot. In fact, he was the one who had the most race pace in the first third of the race and went out of ‘hunting’ for the first two. The first to fall was Verstappen, ahead on lap 20 on the straight before the wall of the champions and, one lap later, repeated play with Russell, race leader.

It seemed that after the storm calm would come, but nothing could be further from the truth. When Norris had already achieved more than six seconds ahead of Verstappen, who took advantage of a mistake from Russell to take second, the American Logan Sargeant (Williams) went off the track and provoked a safety car that disrupted the entire race.

Verstappen, Russell and Piastri stopped, but Norris, calm with his advantage, waited for a lap to go through ‘boxes’ while he saw what wheels his pursuers put. He didn’t know it, but it was a mistake that could have been difficult for him to sign up for the World Cup party.

Norris stopped and came out behind Verstappen and Russell. And the Dutchman started to shoot as soon as the safety car went off the track. He threw and threw as he took advantage of the struggles between the two British to keep taking time.

From behind, everyone was trying to innovate, although almost all recreation went wrong. It was the case of Leclerc, who put hard rubbers when everyone else was going with intermediates because of a small cloud that was going to leave a fine rain for a few minutes.

The Monegasque returned to the intermediates, but it was already too late. He had been doubled by Verstappen and a small engine failure forced him to abandon a race after having reigned in Monaco, achieving the great victory of his career.

But it’s not that things were better for Sainz. With the track wet, he ripped with seventeen laps left and accompanied Leclerc in the paddock, where the drivers piled up to see the resumption of the race with eleven laps left until the end.

An accident of the Thai Alexander Albon (Williams) motivated the departure of a new safety car and from the paddock the two Ferrari drivers, those of Williams and ‘Checo’ Pérez, with the rear wing destroyed, saw a race end in which Verstappen returned to victory after the bitter taste of sixth place in Monaco.

Meanwhile, Piastri was unable to keep up with the Mercedes, who gave a last ‘stint’ that endangered Norris’s second place, which maintained a second place that allows him to continue chasing Leclerc.

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Egypt removes Egyptian football legend Aboutrika from the list of terrorism

The Egyptian Court of Cassation announced on Saturday the decision to remove from the country’s terrorism list the name of the Egyptian football legend Mohamed Aboutrika, as well as another 1,500 more people for their alleged links with the Muslim Brotherhood.

In a statement, the court pointed out that in addition to being removed from this blacklist, the travel ban and the seizure of his funds are also lifted.

“The Court of Cassation heard our arguments today and decided to cancel the judgment of the Criminal Court and return the case for consideration before another court,” said Egyptian lawyer Khaled Ali in his official account of X.

The Criminal Court of Cairo designated Aboutrika in 2017 as a “terrorist” for allegedly financing the Muslim Brotherhood, a group illegalized in Egypt and considered a terrorist since 2013.

A year later, the Prosecutor’s Office requested that his name be included in the country’s “terrorism” list for five years, and last year the Public Prosecutor’s Office decided to renew it for five more years.

This extension is the one that has been rejected today by the Court of Cassation, so this case becomes the competence of another court.

The former Egyptian soccer player publicly supported Mohamed Morsi for the presidency of Egypt, which he won in 2012 in the country’s first democratic elections, although a year later the leader of the Muslim Brotherhood was overthreapped by current President Abdefaltah al Sisi, in a military coup.

International on 102 occasions and double champion of Africa (2006 and 2008), this offensive midfielder, who lives in Qatar and works as a commentator for the Bein Sports channel, was compared for his style of play with the Frenchman Zinedine Zidane and elected Best Player of Africa in club competitions, in 2008.

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