Ousmane Dembélé crowned world’s best player after decade-long journey from Rennes to Paris

From ‘one to watch’ to the best in the world

What makes a good player great, and a great player the best? That question has shadowed Ousmane Dembélé since 2014, when the Guardian’s inaugural Next Generation feature went in search of a France-based talent born in 1997 who could go on to have a stellar career. The shortlist ran to five names, and the decisive questions were not about football ability but about the things that cannot be seen: resilience, adaptability, decision-making, creativity, work ethic, response to feedback and willingness to learn. On those answers, one kid stood out above all the others — a Rennes youth player yet to make a first-team appearance, called Ousmane Dembélé.

Eleven years later, in December 2025, he was voted the best male player in the world by the Guardian’s 219-strong voting panel, topping its seventh annual ranking ahead of Lamine Yamal in second and Vitinha in third. The prize was as much for those invisible qualities as for the goals and the trophies he helped Paris Saint-Germain win — and the story of how he got there is proof that the path to greatness is not always linear.

The defining image of a champion

The defining image of Paris Saint-Germain’s 5-0 win over Inter in the 2025 Champions League final was not the trophy lift, or any one of the goal celebrations, but Dembélé himself: poised on the edge of the opposition penalty area, hunched in demeanour, brow furrowed, his face a picture of focus, ready to press. It was the night he finally made good on years of promise — the culmination of a journey that began like a train, derailed in Barcelona, and was rebuilt in Paris.

A talent with an obligation

Dembélé started off like a train, winning France’s young player of the year award in his first season as a professional and, the following season, helping Borussia Dortmund win the German Cup. It was at Dortmund that Thomas Tuchel, his coach there, offered the most telling insight. Speaking during research for the book Edge, Tuchel said Dembélé’s talent came with “an obligation and responsibility to improve”.

Tuchel bracketed his players into three ‘ABC’ categories depending on their dominant motivation. ‘A’ stood for ‘aggressive-motivated’ players driven by individual glory and awards — Neymar at Paris being the example, and not necessarily a negative one. ‘B’ stood for ‘binding-motivated’ players who love being part of the group and bringing people together, often captains such as César Azpilicueta at Chelsea. ‘C’ stood for ‘curious-motivated’: players capable of greatness who needed to be trained slightly differently, because their talent could take them far — and, on a good day, they were capable of anything. Tuchel loved coaching these players. Dembélé, he felt, was a C.

The Barcelona detour

The journey was not always smooth. In 2017, Dembélé moved to Barcelona, a club flush with the €222m (£194m) received for Neymar — a sliding-doors moment made doubly so by a change of coach that same summer, Ernesto Valverde arriving in place of Luis Enrique. Six injury-laden years followed in which Dembélé started only a third of the club’s league games and scored 24 league goals. His most memorable moment in a Barcelona shirt may have been the one he missed: a last-minute one-on-one in the 2019 Champions League semi-final against Liverpool, with Barcelona already 3-0 up — before the tie was turned on its head by a 4-0 defeat in the second leg. When he did leave, amid mutterings of wasted talent and blackmail, it felt like a relief for all parties.

Liberation in Paris

There is symmetry to the Dembélé of 2025. At the start of the 2024-25 season, Luis Enrique’s plan was for the whole team to replace the goals of Kylian Mbappé, who had joined Real Madrid — no small ask given that Dembélé had not scored more than 10 league goals in a season since his debut campaign at Rennes. But the coach wanted the team to be the star, and with no star player left to serve, Dembélé was liberated. The curious-motivated talent who once scored penalties with either foot, and even took corners with either foot, quietly became the main man: he starts the press; his vision, movement, pace, control and positioning set the tone; and a finishing once considered wasteful is now ruthless.

Thirty goals and the nights that defined them

Of the 30 goals he scored in the 2025 calendar year at the time of writing, the most decisive and emblematic came against Liverpool in the second leg of their Champions League last-16 tie. With PSG 1-0 down from the first leg, Dembélé drifted into his own half — losing markers who did not want to follow him that far — picked up the ball and spread it wide to the right-winger Bradley Barcola, then sprinted into the box and made it to the cross to score. He also scored a penalty in the successful shootout after PSG won 1-0 at Anfield that night.

He did something similar against Arsenal in the semi-final, dropping deep early in the game, switching the play to the left-sided Khvicha Kvaratskhelia and receiving the return ball unmarked on the edge of the area before scoring. Even when teams knew it was coming, they could not stop him.

Closer to an answer

Part of the equation of greatness remains what cannot be seen: the chemistry within a team, the relationship with a specific coach, playing in a system that brings out the best in every player. But also those other qualities Dembélé had at 17, and still has now. As the Guardian’s feature concluded, this well-deserved prize is as much for those attributes as it is for the goals and the trophies he helped Paris Saint-Germain win.

Where things stand now

The coronation has not been entirely free of noise. In September 2026, Mbappé — now a Real Madrid player but still Dembélé’s team-mate with France — insisted there were “no tensions” between the pair after his ‘chosen one’ comments about the PSG forward’s Ballon d’Or triumph sparked a minor media storm, saying the two had already spoken and remained friends ahead of Les Bleus’ Nations League opener against Türkiye.

On the pitch, the new season has started quietly: according to FotMob data as of 8 October 2026, Dembélé has made four Ligue 1 appearances in the 2026-27 campaign, with no goals and one assist. A modest return by the standards of his 2025 annus mirabilis — though if his story has proved anything, it is that the path is rarely linear.