Manchester City and France international footballer Benjamin Mendy has been charged with a further count of rape, a court was told on Wednesday.
The 27-year-old defender was already facing six allegations of rape and one of sexual assault but was charged last week with a seventh rape.
Restrictions on reporting the latest rape charge were lifted as Mendy appeared at Chester Crown Court for a preliminary hearing before his trial next year.
The charges relate to alleged offences against five different women in 2020 and this year.
The footballer who lives in Prestbury, near Macclesfield, northwest England, appeared alongside his co-defendant Louis Saha Matturie, 40, from Eccles, on the outskirts of Manchester.
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Matturie is charged with six serious sex offences against young women.