ESPN have ranked Ousmane Dembele best player in the world, placing the Paris Saint-Germain forward top of their list of the leading footballers in the game right now — ahead of Barcelona’s Lamine Yamal in second and, in a result that will please the Parc rather a lot, PSG team-mate Khvicha Kvaratskhelia in third.
The list, published as the new season gets going, also featured Erling Haaland, Kylian Mbappe and Michael Olise. None of them finished above the reigning Ballon d’Or winner.
Why ESPN have Dembele best player in the world
ESPN’s verdict on Dembele was blunt: he is described as the most complete attacker of the current era. It is hard to argue with the evidence of the last two seasons. This is a player who was, for a long stretch of his career, filed under maddening — brilliant in flashes, absent for months — and who has been rebuilt in Paris into the reference point of a side that has won the Champions League twice in a row.
The ranking was not a coronation without caveats. ESPN also flagged the two things that have always followed Dembele around: his physical fragility and his inconsistency. The numbers back the first of those up. He appeared in only 22 Ligue 1 matches last season, and Luis Enrique has already managed his workload this term, leaving him out of the squad for the trip to Lille after giving him time off following a long summer.
That is the honest picture of Dembele at 29. When he plays, nobody in Europe does more damage. The job for Luis Enrique is simply getting him on the pitch often enough.
Kvaratskhelia third — and the PSG point that follows
Khvicha Kvaratskhelia completing the top three is the detail Paris supporters should sit with for a moment. The Georgian announced himself to a wider audience during last season’s Champions League, scoring 10 goals and adding seven assists on the way to Paris retaining the trophy. He was not a passenger in that run. He was one of the reasons it happened.
Two of the three best players in the world, then, on the same wage bill. For a club chasing a third consecutive European Cup, that is a useful starting position — provided both stay fit and both hit their level by the business end of the season.
A ranking that lands in an odd week
The timing is faintly comic. Les Parisiens are being told they employ the best footballer alive in the same week they have taken two points from two Ligue 1 matches, drawing 2-2 at Rennes and then 2-2 at Lille, where Vitinha’s late strike and cross for a Marquinhos header rescued a point in the closing stages. Dembele did not play in that one.
Paris tend to start slowly and gather speed, and a squad still absorbing new arrivals in Ferran Torres, Maghnes Akliouche, Mika Godts and Lucas Digne is entitled to a settling-in period. But rankings like this one raise the temperature rather than lower it. Being told you have the world’s best player is a compliment that arrives with an invoice attached.
Individual lists are, in the end, opinions dressed up as tables. What is not an opinion is the trophy cabinet: back-to-back Champions Leagues, a 2026 UEFA Super Cup, and a squad that ESPN reckons contains two of the three finest players on the planet. Paris will settle for being argued about on those terms.
Ranking reported by PSG Talk, citing ESPN. Squad and appearance records are listed by Paris Saint-Germain and Ligue 1.
