A footballer who was abused by his coach believes he was the victim of a paedophile ring in the game.

Andy Woodward suffered multiple attacks at the hands of scout and coach Barry Bennell while a youngster at Crewe Alexandra .

The pervert worked for the Cheshire-based lower league side and was closely linked to Manchester City and Stoke City.

Evil Bennell was jailed in the 1990s after admitting a string of sickening sex assaults against young footballers.

But Woodward, who played for Crewe, Sheffield United and Scunthorpe United, believes he was part of a wider paedophile ring.

The 43-year-old, who has waived his right to anonymity, knows of several ex-professionals who were targeted by Bennell.

He suspects he colluded with at least one other paedophile, who has never been caught, to abuse of hundreds of players.

Woodward retired aged just 29 as a result of the mental trauma he suffered following the sexual abuse. He has now gone public with his story in a bid to give other victims the confidence to come forwards.

Sources told the Daily Mirror that at least one former player is poised to make fresh allegations of abuse in the game. Woodward’s claims of a suspected paedophile network within British football has rocked the sport.

But he said: “This will not be a total shock to some people within football that others were involved.

“I’m convinced there is an awful lot more to come out, and there’s a lot more I’m not able to talk about. My life has been ruined, but how many others are there?

“I’m talking about hundreds of children who he cherry-picked for various football teams and who might still be living with that awful fear.

“We’ve seen with the Jimmy Savile case how people have had the courage, yet I’d say within football it’s even harder to speak out.

“Only now, at the age of 43, I feel I can actually live without that secret and that massive, horrible burden. I want to get it out and give other people an opportunity to do the same.

“I want to give people strength. I survived it. I came through the other side. Other people can have that strength.

“We were victims in a profession where we were all so desperate to succeed as footballers. Some of us were fortunate to experience that, yet others weren’t. We all suffered the same pain.”

Bennell abused one boy on Crewe’s training pitch and another at the home of club manager Dario Gradi - who did not know about it.

Tragic footballer Gary Speed , who was found hanged in 2011, was one of the young footballers who stayed at his house.

But both Bennell and Speed’s widow Louise insist the former Wales manager was not one of his victims.

The pervert, now 62, was jailed for nine years in 1998 after admitting abusing boys as young as nine over two decades.

He was given a further two-year term in 2015 for another historical sex offence but is now believed to be free.

Woodward accused League Two side Crewe, who Bennell worked for in the 80s and 90s, of covering up the paedophile scandal.

He said: “That club has been never been held accountable. It must have been well known within the club that he had young boys staying over.

“I was at a professional football club who had a duty to protect children, and there were hundreds of children running around that place. Throughout those years at Crewe, so many people used to talk about it.

“Other players would say directly to my face, ‘I bet he does this to you, we know he does that.’ There was all that dressing-room bravado. Then, outside the club, it was never discussed.

“That’s how football worked back then, ‘We can talk about it within these walls, but we keep it watertight and it doesn’t go any further.’ Nobody wanted to break that circle of trust.”

Bennell - who described himself as a “monster” during court proceedings - first targeted Woodward when he was 11.

He was playing for Stockport Boys at the time and was invited for trials with a team at Manchester City’s training ground.

The talented defender went on to join the youth set-up at Crewe and often stayed at Bennell’s home in Derbyshire in the mid-to-late 80s.

He was repeatedly abused at the house - described as a “treasure trove” filled with fruit machines, a pool table and even a pet monkey.

Bennell used threats and blackmail to make sure his young victims did not report the abuse to their parents or police.

He also threatened to drop Woodward from the team if he upset him or complained about what was happening.

“He’d tell me, ‘At any point you will go, you will disappear and that dream won’t happen.’ It was emotional blackmail,” he said.

Incredibly Bennell later started having a relationship with Woodward’s 16-year-old sister and went on to marry her.

He said: “It was like a double-whammy. He would try to abuse me sometimes even with my sister in the same house. He would come round for Sunday dinner every weekend, sitting with my mum and dad and my family, laughing and joking.

“I was so frightened of him I just had to suffer in silence. I had to live with that on top of everything else. I had to attend the wedding, standing in the church when I really wanted to rip his throat out. It was torture.”

Woodward’s career was plagued by panic attacks caused by the abuse - including one which happened on the pitch during a game.

He feigned a hamstring injury to be taken off the field and later burst into tears in the dressing room.

“I had desperately wanted to be a footballer, it’s all I lived for,” he told the Guardian. “Yet there was so much anger and hurt within me that it was actually football, this game I love, that took away my life as a child.

“It felt like I was in two worlds. I’d be training when I just wanted to burst into tears.

“It was hard because us footballers are supposed to be butch and strong, aren’t we? It’s all banter and changing-room jokes, supposedly. Back then I suffered in silence. That was the way football was - and it was horrendous.”

At his lowest moments brave Woodward, from Stockport, contemplated suicide.

“I was a mess, spiralling to the point where I wasn’t going to be here any more,” he admitted. “I’ve parked in my garage with a pipe, been to woods with a rope, I’ve had tablets ready to go.

“The only thing that ever stopped me was knowing the devastation it would cause others.”

Neil Warnock, Woodward’s former manager at Bury and Sheffield United, said he was “sad and sickened” about the abuse.

He was one of the few people in whom the player confided in about being one of Bennell’s victims.

Warnock, now boss of Cardiff City, said: “It’s been like a life sentence and I really think he is so brave to put it out there and come forward.”

Stan Ternent, Woodward’s former manager at Bury, said: “The people responsible - not just Barry Bennell - need to be brought to book. I just hope other people can be brave enough to come forward now.”