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At 17, Zahia Dehar was caught up in a football sex scandal. Now her first film is the talk of Paris

A decade ago, Zahia Dehar, a French-Algerian teenager, woke up to find her picture on the front of France’s newspapers as the underage girl caught up in a prostitution scandal involving members of the national football squad.

She was an escort that star player Franck Ribéry was said to have solicited as a “birthday present” to himself. Aged 18 when the scandal broke – and just 17 at the time of the incident – Dehar seemed destined to be defined for life by the sordid story.

EA Sports

Each and every year with the release of a new entry into EA Sport’s FIFA franchise people football-fans the world over will be extremely excited at the prospect of a new batch of FIFA-ratings being released. These ratings – which in theory reflect a given player’s performance in the preceding season – should give an indication of who the finest players in the world are. For the most part the guys over at EA Sports do a stellar job in the ratings they give.

Part of the nature of football – and subsequently FIFA – is that everybody will have their favourites. There will never be unanimous support for the player ratings given out by EA. Ronaldo’s devout supporters will belly-ache about how he should be Messi’s equal (or more,) Neymar nuts will moan about why he isn’t faster than Theo Walcott and trolls will argue that...

EA Sports

Akin to a child going into a sweet shop and being told they can fill a large sack with all the candy they can carry, sometimes playing the manager, chairman and captain of an Ultimate Team can be an overwhelming task. Will you be an all-or-nothing Brendan Rodgers or a park-the-bus José Mourinho? Will you play the traditional 4-4-2 or congest the midfield like our Spanish rivals? Perhaps most importantly, which type of squad will you commit to in order to maximise chemistry and best suit your playing style?

The uninitiated Fut player may think that a squad combining the might of the Bundesliga with the pure technique of La Liga would be unbeatable on Ultimate Team. The thought of Cristiano Ronaldo leaping into the air on the end of a Franck Ribéry cross is the stuff of every Fut-fanatics darkest fantasies. However, from a chemistry point...

Tottenham Hotspur’s Gareth Bale and Manchester United’s Robin van Persie are amongst the 10 players shortlisted for the 2012-13 FIFA Ballon d’Or award.

The shortlist for last season’s award is dominated by Bayern Munich and the German Bundesliga – making up for 50% of the nominees.

Champions League winners Thomas Müller, Franck Ribéry, Arjen Robben and Bastian Schweinsteiger of Bayern Munich are all amongst those shortlisted. The treble-winning German side were the only club to have more than one player shortlisted for last season’s award.

Borussia Dortmund’s Robert Lewandowski took the tally up to 5/10 for the Bundesliga.

The full list of shortlisted players is as follows:

Gareth Bale (Wales) – Tottenham Hotspur

Cristiano Ronaldo (Portugal) – Real Madrid

Zlatan Ibrahimović (Sweden) – Paris Saint-Germain

Robert Lewandowski (Poland) – Borussia Dortmund

Lionel Messi (Argentina) – Barcelona

Thomas Müller (Germany) – Bayern Munich

Franck Ribéry (France) – Bayern Munich

Arjen Robben (Netherlands) – Bayern Munich

Bastian Schweinsteiger...

Franck Ribéry and Karim Benzema, two of France's top footballing stars, are to stand trial for allegedly soliciting an underage prostitute. The prosecution claims that both men paid for sexual encounters with Zahia Dehar, now 20, when she was under 18. The Guardian reports that the pair will appear with six other defendants, some of whom will also be levelled with the charge of "aggravated pimping". Last November, the state prosecutor requested that the charges against the two should be dropped on the grounds that they were unaware Dahar was under 18 - however, the investigating judge in charge of the case disagreed and has now sent the case to trial. Both players (more)...

On a bad night for Manchester Bayern Munich displayed trademark efficiency to defeat City 2-0 at the Allianz Arena. Two Mario Gomez tap-ins gave the German side three points and moved them top of Group A with two wins from their opening two games. Manchester City had two strong penalty appeals turned down but on balance were outclassed by their opponents who could realistically have won by four or five. Manchester United also threw away a two goal lead to draw 3-3 with Fc Basel.

What a tough group Manchester City have – Napoli, Villarreal and of course their opponents for this game, Bayern Munich. The Sky Blues’ European journey was just beginning but a loss to Die Roten would put Roberto Mancini’s side 5 points behind the Germans just two games in. It was a huge task for the visitors –the toughest match of the group stages as not only...