Football stars charged over underage prostitute

Football stars Franck Ribery and Karim Benzema were charged today with soliciting an underage prostitute.

This is the latest blow for the French national team that returned from the World Cup in disgrace.

Ribery and Benzema were questioned as part of an investigation into a suspected network of prostitutes that operated out of a nightclub on Paris’s Champs-Elysees.

The scandal, which broke before the World Cup began on June 11 and has been front-page news in France, includes allegations by an escort girl who says Ribery flew her to visit him as a birthday present to himself when she was still under 18.

Ribery is married with two children.