It’s set in stone and gold now, PSG’s Ousmane Dembele is the 2025 Ballon d’Or winner!
The Frenchman beat out the likes of Barcelona’s Lamine Yamal and Liverpool’s Mohamed Salah to take home the coveted prize in Paris on Monday.
With his win tonight, Dembele becomes the first PSG player, and the first Frenchman since Karim Benzema back in 2018, to win the trophy.
The Frenchman becomes the 34th winner of the honour, which was won by Manchester City’s Rodri in 2024.
Ousmane Dembélé’s 2024-25 campaign
A season of personal resurgence and team glory at Paris Saint-Germain: this is what Dembele’s past year entailed.
After years of flashes tempered by injuries and inconsistency, Dembélé delivered on almost every front.
Last year at PSG, he played 49 matches
across all competitions, contributing 33 goals and 15 assists, giving him 46 goal involvements: one of the most prolific tallies among European forwards. Notably, he became the Ligue 1 joint-top scorer with 21 league goals in 29 appearances.
His goals weren’t the only thing turning heads; his creativity and pressing from the front also earned widespread praise.
On the trophy front, the fruits of PSG’s collective effort were massive. The club won the Ligue 1 title, lifted the Coupe de France, secured the Trophée des Champions, and most notably captured their first-ever UEFA Champions League trophy with a dominant 5-0 win over Inter Milan in the final.
In that final, Dembélé notched two assists (for Desire Doue and Khvicha Kvaratskhelia), becoming the first player since Marcelo to provide two assists in a Champions League final.
His Champions League campaign overall was outstanding: eight goals and six assists, marking 14 goal involvements, the second-most ever in a single season by a French player in the competition, behind Karim Benzema’s previous record.
Beyond the numbers, Dembélé impressed with his moments in decisive fixtures. He scored hat-tricks in back-to-back matches: one against VfB Stuttgart in the Champions League and another just days later in Ligue 1 at Brest, becoming the first PSG player to pull off consecutive hat-tricks in official games.
He also scored a crucial goal in the second leg of the round of 16 to help PSG knock out Liverpool, and produced the winner in the first leg of the semi-final away at Arsenal.
Perhaps most significantly, the season marked a turning point in Dembélé’s narrative. Where once injuries and inconsistency threatened to define him, 2024-25 showed a more complete player: a scorer, creator, leader, and a player able to carry tremendous pressure.
