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Paris, France – The 2025 Ballon d’Or promises a captivating contest, pitting the emerging dominance of Barcelona’s Lamine Yamal against the potential redemption arc of Paris Saint-Germain’s Ousmane Dembélé.The upcoming award ceremony isn’t shaping up to honor a clear-cut, historically dominant individual, but rather presents voters with a choice between two distinct conceptions of what the Ballon d’Or should represent.
Historically, the Ballon d’Or has frequently recognized players who define their era – figures like Zinedine Zidane, Ronaldo, Messi, and Ronaldinho. The question facing the 100 voters is whether either Yamal or Dembélé can join that pantheon. While Dembélé’s career initially flashed with brilliance, his trajectory hasn’t consistently projected superstar status.
A victory for Yamal, even without a major team title this season, would align him with past winners like Cristiano Ronaldo (2013, 2014) and Lionel Messi (2010, 2019, 2021) whose triumphs were driven by individual brilliance rather than collective success. Conversely, a win for Dembélé would echo the victories of Rodri (2024), Igor Belanov (1986), and Matthias Sammer (1996), where the award acknowledged the power of a successful team – Manchester City and Spain, Dynamo Kyiv, and Dortmund and Germany, respectively – as much as individual talent.
The 2025 Ballon d’Or, despite its imperfections, lacks a candidate who embodies all the qualities of an indisputable winner. Yet,a triumph for Yamal would signal the beginning of a new era,while a victory for Dembélé would celebrate the impact of a supremely collective player and a different ideology of football.
