MOSCOW, April 9 (RAPSI) – Russian footballers Alexander Kokorin and Pavel Mamayev partially pleaded guilty denying criminal conspiracy during the first hearing of their hooliganism case on Tuesday, RAPSI reports from Moscow’s Presnensky District Court.

The footballers said that they had not committed compounding criminal acts as prosecutors insisted.

Mamayev also claims that he did not participate in a coffee bar fight. Moreover, Kokorin's lawyer stated a victim in this fight first talked obscenities to the defendants and therefore provoked aggression.

On April 3, Moscow’s Presnensky District Court refused to release Mamayev, Zenit St. Petersburg’s football player Alexander Kokorin, Kokorin’s younger brother Kirill and children’s football coach Alexander Protasovitsky and extended their detention in a hooliganism case until September 25.

The four men were arrested on October 11 and charged with hooliganism, battery and intended bodily injury.

The defendants initiated two fights in central Moscow in the early morning of October 11. According to the police, a driver of a Russian TV journalist received a nose fracture during the first incident on a street in central Moscow.

Two hours later, Ministry of industry and trade official Denis Pak and CEO of the Central Scientific Research Automobile and Automotive Engines Institute Sergey Gaysin were assaulted by the footballers in a coffee bar and had to undergo medical treatment, the police stated. Pak reportedly sustained a concussion. The café’s video records showed one of the sportsmen beating up Pak with chair.

The footballers pleaded partially guilty to an incident with the driver. According to attorney Igor Bushmanov representing Mamayev, his client has paid out damage caused to the beaten driver.