Golden Ball Awards: Winners and Losers
He may not have all the classic qualities, behavior, or character of a quintessential champion.
However, last season, no player was better positioned to claim the top individual honor, and it was Ousmane Dembélé who was awarded the Ballon d’Or by France Football in Paris.
This prestigious individual award is intended for the planet’s best footballer based on performance between August 1, 2024, and July 13, 2025.
Before the ceremony, Dembélé was a clear favorite to win.
His most serious opponent was considered to be the Spanish superstar Lamine Yamal, who is widely expected to win the most prestigious individual football award in the coming years. Consequently, the young Barcelona ace officially took second place at the award ceremony, while the excellent Paris Saint-Germain midfielder, Vitinha, secured the third position. Mohamed Salah (Liverpool) finished fourth, and Raphinha (Barcelona) was fifth.
All the pieces truly fell into place for Ousmane Dembélé.
He had the most successful season of his career and played for the strongest team in Europe. Indeed, during courtesy speeches, players often feel compelled to say they “owe everything to their teammates and the manager, and that this is their success, too.”
In this case, however, that sentiment was particularly accurate.
Statistically, Dembélé was more successful than Lamine Yamal, who was his biggest competition.
Conversely, his raw stats were arguably below those of Raphinha, who finished in an incomprehensibly low and undeserved fifth place. Furthermore, the ease or difficulty of accumulating statistics in the Spanish La Liga versus the French Ligue 1 is not truly comparable.
In terms of leadership, Dembélé was not on the level of Mohamed Salah, who was a Golden Ball contender in the first part of the season and carried Liverpool on his shoulders with an unreal intensity.
Nonetheless, Dembélé was the best player in one of the strongest and most successful teams in Europe last season.
Therefore, in modern football, the Ballon d’Or can no longer be considered an award for the world’s best individual footballer. This was also the case last season, when Rodri (Manchester City) won the award, with many of his statistics being boosted because of his team’s dominant play.
In ten years, it will be difficult to explain to a young fan how the 2025 Ballon d’Or was won by Ousmane Dembélé, and how he suddenly became the best footballer in the world.
Dembélé is, in fact, one of the few winners in history who has secured the Ballon d’Or without ever previously being nominated in a wider circle of 20 or 30 candidates.
On the other hand, we have Dembélé’s compatriot, Kylian Mbappé, who is arguably the most consistently world-class footballer of today. He was just 18 years old when he was first nominated after his explosion at Monaco and immediately finished in the Top 10 (seventh place).
Since then, and to this day, Mbappé is the only footballer in the world who has been among the top 10 in the race for the Golden Ball every single year. Despite this consistency, he has been very unlucky not to win it. The closest he came was in 2023, when even a hat-trick in the World Cup final was not enough to secure better than third place; Messi’s fairy tale in Qatar was untouchable.
Dembélé’s success is certainly built into the collective.
In fact, there were four other teammates from PSG in the Top 10 (Vitinha, Hakimi, Donnarumma, Mendes), and three more in the Top 20 (Kvaratskhelia, Doué, Neves). Furthermore, a case could be made for Fabian Ruiz, who unfairly finished in 24th place.
When the situation is viewed this way, Dembélé essentially had a third of the world’s best footballers in his team last season.
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