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[Awards Review]
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▶ PSG's Ousmane Dembélé rightfully wins the 2025 men’s Ballon d’Or over Barcelona's Lamine Yamal
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[2025/09/23 ]
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On Monday night at the iconic Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris, an emotional Ousmane Dembélé won the 2025 Ballon d’Or over teen prodigy Lamine Yamal from Barcelona, making him the first men’s PSG player to win the accolade since Lionel Messi in 2021, someone he played with at Barcelona.
 "I want to thank FC Barcelona, the club of my dreams," Dembélé said. "I played with Lionel Messi, I want to thank him too, I learned so much from him."
Last season, he most definitely put those words into application because the French star became a menace in front of goal. His numbers speak for themselves. The 28-year-old Dembélé scored 35 goals and earned 14 assists in 53 matches for PSG but most notably, the French attacker became the pivotal weapon that helped the club win the Champions League, Ligue 1 and Coupe de France. He also helped PSG earn a place in the Club World Cup final, where it eventually lost to Chelsea. Dembélé was also the joint top scorer in Ligue 1 with 21 goals and was the league’s and Champions League player of the year.
Despite the fact that PSG were playing on Monday night against Marseille, he was able to attend the award due to an injury.
The victory was a testament to the great work done by PSG in 2024-25 as the club won the award for club of the year whilst Luis Enrique also won the men's Johan Cruyff Trophy for manager of the season and Gianluigi Donnarumma (now with Manchester City) received the Yashin trophy for best goalkeeper. It was a historic campaign from the French champions, who delivered the first continental title in club history and the first European treble by a men’s French team.
It’s not to say that it was exactly a rags-to-riches story as PSG, per Forbes, is the seventh-most valuable club in the game. Owned by Qatar Sports Investments, which is a subsidiary of the Qatar Investment Authority, the nation’s wealth fund and chaired by Nasser Al-Khelaïfi, PSG's president, who received the award for best club on Monday. We are talking about a club with almost $900 million in revenue so to win the Champions League was in many ways a title long overdue. But in this day and age of the modern game, there is no such thing as an easy route to silverware, especially when you face other European giants who are equally as wealthy, if not more. And that’s why Luis Enrique arrived at the club, to make them forget about luxury and remind them that in order to be a champion, hunger needs to come from within.
For Dembélé, therefore, this was an important season because he also needed to make PSG fans forget about their prodigal son Kylian Mbappé, who had just left for Real Madrid, ironically enough for the purpose of finding his own, first Champions League title. Mbappé had an incredible season by his own accord, having scored more goals than any other player in Europe last season but the hunt for the continental title disappeared in the quarterfinal against Arsenal. The league was also lost to Barcelona. His departure from Paris wasn’t just a proverbial thorn in the minds of Parisians but it was also now left as a question mark: What will PSG do now?
Mbappé's departure was Dembélé's chance to help the club reclaim a new identity, a new journey and a new sense of relentless hunger. The path hasn’t been easy, especially with Barcelona as he didn’t quite live up to the adoration of the fans or management. His move to Barcelona from Borussia Dortmund was also met with pressure as he arrived to the club in 2017 to replace Neymar Jr., who had consequently moved to PSG. His career has almost always been about being a symbolic bandaid. Someone who needed to just soften the wounds of a superstar’s exit who preceded his arrival.
And that was the case in Paris as he came to the club to make sure, above all else, he could help PSG win the Champions League. The 2024-25 squad assembled by Luis Enrique was one of extreme riches as it included Nuno Mendes, Achraf Hakimi, the aforementioned Donnarumma, Vitinha and Khvicha Kvaratskhelia, who arrived halfway through the season.
So he had wonderful teammates, but in the end, it was Dembélé who creatively led the club to glory in the most fantastical way.
- The origianl text resource is from Yahoo Sports |
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