On several occasions, the women had their phones confiscated upon arrival and believed they had been locked in their rooms, the prosecutor said.
The attitude of Mr. Mendy and Mr. Matturie was that once the doors closed behind the women in his mansion or a separate flat they used on Chapel Street, they were “available for sex”, Cray told jurors.
He continued: “In other words, the prosecution accept that some women would consent to have sex with Mendy, but not all women did or did.”
The big leap Mr Mendy made, he said, was to act as if every woman who came to his house was available for sex.
“Together, (the defendants) had convinced themselves that the free and informed consent to sex of the women who entered their orbits did not matter,” Cray said.
The men allegedly turned “the pursuit of women for sex into a game.”
Opening the trial, Cray said the case had “very little to do with football”, adding: “Instead, we say, it’s another chapter in a very old story: men raping and sexually assaulting women , because they think they’re powerful and because they think they can get away with it.”
Defendants ‘wouldn’t take no for an answer’
Mendy was a “reasonably famous footballer” who was a World Cup winner with the French national team and had a contract with Manchester City, the jury heard.
“Because of his wealth and status, others were willing to help him get what he wanted,” the prosecutor said, including Matturie, who he said was Mendy’s “friend and fixer.”
He continued: “The allegations show that one of Saha’s jobs for Mendy was to find young women and create situations where those women could be raped and sexually assaulted.”
The two men, the prosecutor said, showed a “callous indifference to the women behind them.”
Cray said: “Our case is that the defendants’ pursuit of these 13 women made them predators, who were prepared to commit serious sex crimes.
“The fact that they didn’t take ‘no’ for an answer, or that they engineered situations where ‘no’ wasn’t even an option, is something you’ll hear over and over again.”
The defendants will claim that the sexual encounters were consensual or did not happen at all, the prosecutor told the jury.
Women felt ‘trapped and isolated’
Mr Mendy’s gated mansion is 17 miles south of central Manchester and a 15-minute walk from the nearest village of Prestbury, which added to the feeling some women had of being “trapped and isolated”, he said the prosecutor
Drone footage was played to the jury showing the mansion surrounded by fields, as well as body camera footage of the many floors and rooms it contained, including a gym with murals of Mr Mendy on the walls.
The prosecutor said: “Once you’re at home, if you don’t know, it’s not the easiest thing to know where you are, where you’re going or where your friends might be.”
Another feature of the mansion was the special locking mechanisms on the doors, apparently used to create a ‘panic room’ in the event of a burglary, so that they could only be opened from the inside and not from the outside .
However, the prosecutor said, you need to know how to open the doors of these rooms from the inside to get out, which several of the women did not do, making them feel as if they were locked inside at the time of his alleged assaults.
The offenses are alleged to have taken place between October 2018 and August last year.
Matturie, 40, of Eccles, Salford, denies eight counts of rape and four counts of sexual assault in relation to eight young women. The alleged crimes span from July 2012 to August last year.
Mendy has played for Manchester City since 2017, when he joined from Monaco for £52million.
He was suspended by the club after being charged by the police.
The trial continues.