Tearful Dembele wins Ballon d’Or as PSG dominate

Ousmane Dembele, the first ballon d’or winner for Paris St-Germain, was presented with several of the key men’s awards at the Paris ceremony.

As PSG won the Champions League, league title, and French Cup, the 28-year-old France forward led the team to 35 goals and 14 assists in 53 games last season.

He was named the French top flight and Champions League player of the year and had 21 goals overall.

And he also assisted PSG in their New Jersey defeat to Chelsea in the Club World Cup final.

Dembele, who defeated Barcelona’s Lamine Yamal to win the award, was able to attend the ceremony in Paris on Monday evening, and he was teary as he stood on the stage.

It marks the start of a phenomenal career revival for a player who has never scored in double figures for a team since he was a teenager at Rennes.

Due to a tactical change in the middle of December, PSG manager Luis Enrique, who was named coach of the year, deserves a lot of praise for Dembele’s award.

Dembele had only scored five goals before being moved from a wide right-wing position to center-forward against Lyon on December 15.

From that point on, he scored 30 goals for PSG.

Dembele’s performance finally led Barcelona to pay an initial $96.8 million, with the potential to increase to $335.5 million, to sign him from Borussia Dortmund in 2017.

However, PSG, who won the 2025 Ballon d’Or award, chose the team that made the deal by signing him for just £43.5 million in 2023.

In addition to his two goals for France in 2024 and 2025, Dembele also scored twice.

Lamine Yamal, 18, placed second overall and won the Kopa Trophy for best young player.

Third was Liverpool’s Mohamed Salah, third was Portugal’s Vitinha, and PSG’s Vitinha was third.

Cole Palmer from England and Chelsea finished eighth.

Viktor Gyokeres, a striker for Arsenal, won the Gerd Muller Trophy, which is given to the top scorer in club and nation football between 2024 and 2025.

The 27-year-old scored 54 goals in 52 games last season for Portuguese side Sporting and nine goals in six Swedes’ Nations League matches.

In the summer, he signed for Arsenal for up to £64 million.

The winner was unsure prior to the ceremony despite the fact that the award was based on fact.

Harry Kane of Bayern Munich and Kylian Mbappe of Real Madrid shared the record for goals last season, albeit for their respective clubs, scoring 52 and each.

Lamine Yamal may have been disappointed that he did not receive the Ballon d’Or, with rumors surfacing hours prior to the event that he had won.

However, for the second year in a row, the Barcelona star was awarded the Kopa Trophy for best player under the age of 21.

Although it was only started in 2018, the teenager is the first to win it twice.

He assisted Spain in achieving both the Copa del Rey and La Liga’s domestic double last year.

In 55 games, the winger added 21 assists and scored 18 goals, including the netting in three different Clasicos.

Luis Enrique of Paris St-Germain won the trophy for the best men’s coach in the years 2024-2020, whether at a club or international level.

Despite losing star man Mbappe to a free transfer at the start of the season, the 55-year-old Spaniard led PSG to their first Champions League title to complete a treble.

The former Barcelona player is the only other player to have won the treble with two different clubs after Pep Guardiola.

The Xana Fundacion, which Luis Enrique’s family established in memory of his daughter who died from bone cancer at the age of nine in 2019, received the Socrates Award, which is a kind one.

It is dedicated to offering life-threatening illnesses to children and young people in its entirety.

Gianluigi Donnarumma, an Italian goalkeeper who is currently a player for Manchester City, won the 2024-2025 award for his performances at Paris St.Germain.

Before joining City for £26 million on deadline day, the 26-year-old kept 17 clean sheets in 47 games for the treble winners.

He placed ninth overall on the Ballon d’Or list.

Alisson Becker, a keeper at Liverpool, came in second place.

Donnarumma, who was named Euro 2020 player of the year, also won the award in 2021.