A year on from his own coronation, the Dembele Ballon d’Or story has picked up a fresh chapter. The Paris Saint-Germain forward has spent this week talking about what it is actually like to be the reigning holder — and about the awkward question that trails the award around: whether an individual prize really belongs in a team sport.
His answer, reported by PSG Talk, is that it is both things at once, and that winning it once buys you nothing.
The Dembele Ballon d’Or verdict: collective, but individual
“You have to show why you were elected Ballon d’Or. After that, you still have to perform, especially in Champions League matches, World Cup matches,” Dembele said.
“It’s a collective trophy, but also an individual one nonetheless. The forty goals, it’s still you who scored them. You’re obviously helped by your teammates, but it remains an individual trophy.”
It is a more interesting position than the usual winner’s deflection. Dembele is not pretending the award belongs to the dressing room; he is saying the numbers are yours, the help is theirs, and the only way to justify the first is to keep producing on the nights that count. Anyone who has followed the Ballon d’Or winner’s career from its scattered early years to the player Luis Enrique now builds around will recognise how far that is from where he started.
The competition is in his own dressing room
The complication for Paris is that the biggest threat to Dembele retaining the trophy is sitting a few pegs down from him. Paris Saint-Germain put a record contingent of players on this year’s list, which is what happens when a squad wins back-to-back European Cups — but it also means the Parisian vote is split several ways.
Khvicha Kvaratskhelia is the name most often attached to the race. The Georgian has been publicly backed by Michel Platini and Toni Kroos, and answered that endorsement with the sort of modesty that tends to win people over: “it doesn’t depend on me, it depends on the people who decide.” Dembele himself has already tipped his teammate for it. Desire Doue, meanwhile, is the cautionary tale in all this — brilliant, decorated, and 31st in last year’s vote.
If you want the mechanics of how the thing is decided — the jury, the criteria, the weighting — we have set it out in our guide to how the Ballon d’Or works.
Form to back the words up
Dembele is, at least, doing the performing part. He scored twice as Paris opened their Champions League title defence by beating Slovan Bratislava 6-1 at the Parc des Princes, Ferran Torres taking a hat-trick alongside him and Fabian Ruiz adding a late sixth.
The collective side of the ledger is less flattering, and Dembele has said so himself, refusing to sugarcoat a start to the campaign that has left Les Parisiens winless in Ligue 1 after three matches. That is the backdrop to this weekend’s trip to Brest, where Paris go looking for a first league win of the season — and where sporting director Luis Campos will be watching from somewhere other than the touchline, having picked up a one-match stadium ban after the draw at Lille.
Win there, and the individual-versus-collective argument becomes a good deal easier to have.
What is not confirmed
Dembele’s comments were given in French and are reproduced here as translated and reported by PSG Talk; the “forty goals” figure is his own, quoted rather than verified at this desk. No ceremony date, shortlist ranking or vote standing is asserted above, and nothing here is a prediction of the outcome.
