The former England football captain Alan Shearer was trained by a coach who is accused of having sexually abused other junior players in the same period, a jury has been told.

Shearer, now a respected BBC pundit, was named in court by an alleged victim of the former Southampton FC youth coach Bob Higgins as one of several promising players who were close to him.

Shearer is the biggest name to emerge in the trial of Higgins, who denies 50 charges of indecent assault involving 24 boys. The former Chelsea captain Dennis Wise and the ex-Manchester United player Danny Wallace have also been identified as players who stayed at Higgins’ home.

This week another former professional player, Mark Blake, who was trained by Higgins at Southampton before playing for Fulham and Shrewsbury Town, claimed the coach’s preferred players were known as “Bob’s boys”. None of the four former professionals are complainants.

Salisbury crown court has been told that Higgins is a “predatory paedophile” who used his “supreme power” to allegedly carry out a campaign of sexual abuse against schoolboy footballers over a period of 25 years.

Higgins, now 65, abused boys on football camps, at the home he shared with his wife, Shirley, in his car and on ferries, it is alleged.

Shearer’s name surfaced during evidence from a complainant identified as K, who alleges he was abused by Higgins after signing for Southampton aged 12.

In an interview with police played to the jury, K claimed he was touched intimately by Higgins while he was in his car and in the coach’s room during a training camp. K said his relationship with his own father “fell apart” because of the alleged abuse by Higgins.

Shearer came through Southampton’s youth system in the 1980s before playing for Blackburn Rovers and Newcastle and scoring 30 goals in 63 appearances for England.

K said: “There was a group of player that spent a lot of time with Bob Higgins. Alan Shearer was one of them who had a lot of contact with Bob … They spent a lot of time in his company in that time.”

He told police: “I was about 12 when I started training with Southampton. The first four or five months, I always found Bob Higgins to be approachable, he would always put his arm round you when you spoke to him.

“I started to get invited to personal training – we would be doing fitness work. My dad would drive me to the training, but the second time I went, Bob drove me and it was just me and him in the car.

“He was speaking to me about football and he put his hand on my leg. He stroked my leg with his left hand and after about a minute and a half to two minutes he put his hand on my crotch. I just froze.”

K continued: “He used to talk about trusting him, that he could make you a superstar. You felt he held your future.”

The former footballer said he went to a training camp in Lymington, Hampshire, and was twice invited to Higgins’ room, where he claims he was abused.

He said he was also given “soapy massages” during which he was naked apart from a towel. “He said this was what the first team did, it was what other professional clubs did. You would lie on a bench naked, apart from a towel.”

K said Higgins would rub him in intimate areas.

The trial continues.