Ousmane Dembélé knew the tears would come, inevitably. In the last few days, he thought long and hard about what would happen if his dream of winning the 2025 Ballon d’Or became reality.
He talked about it many times with his best friend, Moustapha Diatta, who sat next to his mother, Fatoumata, and his agent, Moussa Sissoko, at the ceremony on Monday night.
Diatta knew the tears would come for him as well, and they did. Dembélé on the stage; Diatta in the audience. In his acceptance speech, Dembélé mentioned his BFF and how they grew up inseparable in the same block of flats of the “la Plaine” council estate in Evreux, 100 kilometers west of Paris. Dembélé lived on the fifth floor; Diatta the first. At all hours the pair played football with now-Bayern Munich center back Dayot Upamecano — who lived across the road — on the little concrete square with benches as the goals, or against the wall. Winning the FIFA World Cup, UEFA Champions League or Ballon d’Or was always the dream.
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Dembélé has now won all three. At 28, he reached a new level last season, which saw him crowned as the best player in the world on Monday. His story of lifting the Ballon d’Or, becoming the sixth Frenchman to do so in history after Raymond Kopa, Michel Platini, Jean-Pierre Papin, Zinedine Zidane and Karim Benzema is one of resilience and perseverance. Of never giving up.
Dembélé was born a football genius with an innate talent, and capable of doing things at 16 years old that only a few players could ever do. He had everything: the ability to dribble with both feet, devastating pace, bravery, incredible skill on the ball and the confidence to go with it. But after exploding on to the scene in 2015 with Stade Rennais in Ligue 1 at 17, he lost his way after moves to Borussia Dortmund €15 million and then Barcelona €105 million in two years.
After six years of stagnation at Camp Nou, he had to find the right place to fulfill his potential and start his journey again toward the top. He needed the right club and manager to take him to the next level, where his talent belonged.
Enter Luis Enrique and Paris Saint-Germain in 2023. What the Spanish manager has done with Dembélé over the past 12 months is exceptional; he transformed a talented-but-inconsistent winger into a lethal No. 9 striker in the same way that legendary Arsenal boss Arsène Wenger changed the trajectory of Thierry Henry’s career with a similar positional shift.
When Luis Enrique repositioned Dembélé from right winger to center forward back in December 2024, he knew exactly what he was doing. The former Barcelona boss had seen enough at training to know that this player held the key to PSG’s season.
Rolland Courbis, one of France’s greatest coaches, who worked with a young Dembélé at Stade Rennais, was the first to play him centrally in 2015. Even back then, Courbis, a colorful character, considered his young prodigy to have all the qualities to be a great No. 9: intelligence, awareness, quick feet, pace. Luis Enrique saw the same. When Dembélé needed freedom to fit his fluidity with the structure of the Spaniard’s tactics, he got it. When he needed support and trust, he got it. When he needed a kick in the backside, he got that, too.
Dembélé was dropped for the Arsenal game in the Champions League phase in October 2024 after a disagreement with his manager. But he came back stronger. When Luis Enrique told him about moving to a new position, the Frenchman didn’t need to be convinced. He knew he was made for the role: to be both a No. 10 and a No. 9, scoring goals and creating others for his teammates, always moving to disrupt the opposition’s defensive organization, and triggering the PSG press and counter-press. From December to July, Dembélé did all of that and more.
By the end of the season, he notched 37 goals and 15 assists across all competitions, incredible stats that were partnered with an incredible work rate that inspired the whole PSG squad. He has led his team to the Quintuple, and with the Intercontinental Cup coming in December, they can make it a Sextuple, which would see PSG draw level with Pep Guardiola’s famous 2009 Barcelona team and Hansi Flick’s Bayern Munich squad of 2020.
In every major game that Dembélé has played, excluding this summer’s Club World Cup final defeat against Chelsea, he has been decisive. In PSG’s 5-0 Champions League final win over Internazionale, his eyes, locked on goalkeeper Yann Sommer, became a viral moment that symbolized his determination and completed his transformation.
On Monday night, in the beautiful surroundings of the Theatre du Chatelet in Paris, his eyes were fixed on another prize as the 28-year-old finally got his hands on the Ballon d’Or and joined the pantheon of great footballers, which is where he belongs.
ESPN
