Manchester City footballer Benjamin Mendy has been found not guilty of the rape of a 19-year-old woman at his home in Prestbury, Cheshire on 24 July last year.
The football player was cleared of one count of rape on the direction of the judge at his trial at Chester Crown Court.
Co-accused Louis Saha Mendy, 41, was also found not guilty on the direction of the judge of two counts of rape and one of sexual assault against the same woman.
Judge Stephen Everett ordered the jury to clear the defendants of those counts after the prosecution offered no further evidence and formal not guilty counts were entered.
Both men are still on trial for multiple alleged sexual offences.
Mendy is accused of eight counts of rape, one count of sexual assault and one count of attempted rape, relating to seven young women.
He denied all charges.
All offences are alleged to have taken place at his home address in Cheshire and span between October 2018 and August last year.
A jury of eight men and four women were sworn in for the trial in early August, which is expected until mid-December.
Prosecutors have alleged that Mendy was a “predator” who used a “fixer” in Matturie to bring a “stream of women” to his home for sex. Both accused say that any sex that took place was consensual.
Prosecuting barrister Timothy Cray told the jury: “The prosecution case is simple. It has little to do with football. Instead, we say, it is another chapter in a very old story: men who rape and sexually assault women, because they think they are powerful, and because they think they can get away with it.”