Dembélé voted Guardian Player of the Year after PSG Champions League triumph
From Next Generation pick to world’s best
Eleven years after being identified in the Guardian’s inaugural Next Generation feature as a France-based talent born in 1997 with exceptional intangible qualities, Ousmane Dembélé has been voted the best male player in the world by the Guardian’s 219-strong voting panel.
The assessment in 2014 was not based on football ability alone. The writer looked at resilience, adaptability, decision-making, creativity, work ethic, response to feedback and willingness to learn. Dembélé, then a Rennes youth player yet to make a first-team appearance, stood out above the shortlist.
Defining image in Paris
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 a goal celebration, but Dembélé poised on the edge of the opposition penalty area, hunched, brow furrowed, face a picture of focus as he prepared to press.
A non-linear path
Dembélé’s rise has not been linear. He won France’s young player of the year in his first professional season and helped Borussia Dortmund win the German Cup the following season.
Thomas Tuchel, his Dortmund coach, recalled bracketing players into ABC motivation categories. A for aggressive-motivated, B for binding-motivated, and C for curious-motivated. Tuchel said Dembélé was a C, a player capable of greatness who needed different training and could be capable of anything on a good day.
The move to Barcelona in 2017, funded by the Neymar sale, proved a sliding doors moment. Coach changes from Luis Enrique to Ernesto Valverde, injuries and adaptation issues followed. In six injury-laden years he started only a third of league games and scored 24 league goals. The missed one-on-one in the 2019 Champions League semi-final against Liverpool, when Barcelona were 3-0 up, became a painful memory before the 4-0 collapse.
Liberation at PSG
Symmetry has marked 2025. Of 30 goals scored in the calendar year to date, the most emblematic came against Liverpool in the Champions League last-16 second leg. PSG were 1-0 down from the first leg. Dembélé drifted into his own half, dragged markers out, released Bradley Barcola wide, sprinted into the box and scored from the cross. He also converted a penalty in the shootout after a 1-0 win at Anfield.
A similar deep drop created the goal against Arsenal in the semi-final, switching play to Khvicha Kvaratskhelia and receiving the return unmarked on the edge of the area to score.
At the start of last season Luis Enrique’s plan was for the whole team to replace the goals of Kylian Mbappé after he joined Real Madrid. Dembélé had not scored more than 10 league goals in a season since his Rennes debut. The team-as-star approach liberated the curious-motivated talent who once took penalties and corners with either foot.
He now starts the press, sets the tone with vision, movement, pace, control and positioning, and finishes with ruthlessness once considered wasteful.
Part of the equation remains unseen: chemistry within the team, the relationship with the coach, and the system that brings out the best in every player. The qualities Dembélé showed at 17 are still evident now. The prize is as much for those attributes as for the goals and trophies he helped Paris Saint-Germain win.