The first time Mr. Woodward stayed at the cottage, Mr. Bennell gave him a pair of soccer cleats to keep. The second time, he asked him to come into bed and play a game he called “follow me,” where they took turns touching each other, at Mr. Bennell’s direction.

The third time, the rapes started and they continued for four years: in a bunk bed with another boy lying above; in a car on the way to training; in youth hostels during soccer tournaments; and, occasionally, in Mr. Woodward’s own house, after Mr. Bennell had eaten dinner with Mr. Woodward’s family.

When Mr. Woodward resisted, he would be dropped from the next match and made to sit on the bench. “I can ruin your football tomorrow,” Mr. Bennell would tell him, warning: “Keep quiet or you’re finished.”

Mr. Woodward did keep quiet, until 1998, when the police knocked on his door and told him that Mr. Bennell faced charges of sexual abuse. Mr. Woodward became an anonymous witness in a case in which Mr. Bennell, now 62, was sent to jail for nine years on 23 charges of sexual abuse, including buggery, against six boys. Mr. Bennell had already served a prison sentence in the United States for raping a 13-year-old boy at a soccer holiday camp, and he was convicted again as recently as 2015.

Since then, Mr. Bennell has been living under an assumed name, but he was taken back into custody after Mr. Woodward went public with his story in The Guardian, a British newspaper, on Nov. 16. Mr. Bennell now faces eight counts of child sexual assault, the Crown Prosecution Service announced last month.

For years, Mr. Bennell and other pedophilic coaches appear to have been protected by powerful individuals at the clubs where they worked.