Moroccan football player Achraf Hakimi will go on trial for allegedly raping a woman in 2023, a claim the Paris Saint-Germain defender disputes, a French appeals court confirmed on Friday.

A 24-year-old woman reported to police in the Val-de-Marne area southeast of Paris in February 2023 that Hakimi had sexually assaulted her.

The Moroccan national team’s captain and right-back for PSG, whose second World Cup encounter against Scotland begins on Friday, has repeatedly denied any misconduct.

Hakimi posted on X shortly after the Versailles Court of Appeal’s decision that he had been “waiting for this trial since day one.”

“I’ll be able to talk at last,” he declared.

The trial at the Hauts-de-Seine department’s criminal court has not yet been scheduled to begin.

“We anticipated this confirmation. Fanny Colin, Hakimi’s attorney, stated, “Nothing here indicates that he is guilty of anything; he remains steadfast in his defense.”
According to Rachel-Flore Pardo, the plaintiff’s attorney, the ruling gave her client “relief and hope.”

According to a police source at the time, the plaintiff claimed to have met Hakimi on Instagram in January 2023 and traveled to his house in a cab that the player had requested.

She said the player raped her after kissing her and touching her without her will.

She claimed that after pushing him away, she texted a friend, who then arrived to get her.

The woman, going by the alias Jeanne, made her first public statement in a Mediapart piece on Thursday, stating that she wanted a trial “to defend myself, to be heard.”

“I wish to give an explanation. “I want people to trust me,” she continued.