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Who won the 2025 Ballon d’Or?

Who won the 2025 Ballon d’Or?

Soccer

Published:

By: Griffin Wong

Nearly four months after completing one of the most remarkable seasons in football history, Paris Saint-Germain’s rise to the pinnacle of world football was officially completed today. What had seemed a distinct possibility finally became reality when France Football awarded Ousmane Dembélé the 2025 Ballon d’Or after his tremendous individual effort and PSG’s historic quadruple.

PSG had already been one of the world’s biggest clubs, winning 11 of the last 13 Ligue 1 titles, but prior to 2025, it had made the Champions League final just once in its run of dominance, falling 1-0 to Bayern Münich in 2020. It wasn’t exactly a surprise that the French giants finally got over the hump, although expectations were tempered entering the season after Kylian Mbappé’s departure to Real Madrid.

Dembélé’s rise, though, came out of nowhere. He had always been an afterthought in the attack in prior seasons, whether at FC Barcelona behind Lionel Messi, Memphis Depay, and Robert Lewandowski or at PSG behind Mbappé, and he didn’t start more than half of his team’s league games in any season between the 2018-19 campaign with Barcelona and 2024-25. He’d also scored more than 10 league goals in a season just once prior to 2024-25, and he’d never been nominated for the Ballon d’Or. Notching 21 goals and six assists in 29 league appearances and adding a further eight goals and six assists in the Champions League certainly makes him a worthy winner.

Barcelona’s Lamine Yamal finished second, with Dembélé’s PSG teammate Vitinha third. Liverpool’s Mohammed Salah finished fourth and Barcelona’s Raphinha fifth, with Achraf Hakimi (PSG), Mbappé, Cole Palmer (Chelsea), Gianluigi Donnarumma (PSG), and Nuno Mendes (PSG) rounding out the top 10.

Can Dembélé repeat in 2026?

Though the 2025-26 season is young, Dembélé now sets his sights on becoming the first back-to-back Ballon d’Or winner since Cristiano Ronaldo in 2016 and 2017 (Lionel Messi won in 2019 and 2021, and the trophy was not awarded in 2020). To do that, he’ll likely have to win Ligue 1 and the Champions League again, and France will have to make a deep run in next summer’s World Cup. He’ll also have to replicate his individual numbers from the 2024-25 season.

He’s off to a good start so far: he’s notched two goals and an assist in three Ligue 1 appearances so far, and PSG only just dropped its first match of the season with its backups while he was at the Ballon d’Or ceremony. His team also won its first Champions League game, thrashing Atalanta 4-0, although Dembélé did not play. PSG has the fourth-shortest odds (+650) of winning the Champions League at DraftKings Sportsbook, and Dembélé (+1800) has the 10th-shortest odds of finishing as its top scorer. Last season, he ranked sixth in goals and second in assists. France (+650) also has the second-shortest odds of winning the World Cup.

Griffin Wong

I am a promoter at DraftKings and am also an avid fan and user and may sometimes play on my personal account in the games that I offer advice on. Although I have expressed my personal view on the games and strategies above, they do not necessarily reflect the view(s) of DraftKings and do not constitute a representation that any particular strategy will guarantee success. All customers should use their own skills and judgment in building lineups. I may also deploy different players and strategies than what I recommend above. I am not an employee of DraftKings and do not have access to any non-public information.