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| AFP Yonhap News |
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| APYonhap News |
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Washed away all the notoriety and stood at the peak of world soccer. It's Usman Dembele, the main character of the twist.
Dembele was the main character at the '2025 Ballon d'Or' award ceremony held at the Chatelle Theatre in Paris, France, on the 23rd. In recognition of his best performance in the 2024-2025 season, he was selected as the winner of the men's player category.
Organized by French football magazine France Football, the Ballon d'Or is an award given to the best player in the world. It is the highest honor that a player with the best performance in a season can receive. From August 1, 2024, to July 31, 2025, the 30 finalists who performed well were selected through 100 press corps votes around the world. Following Dembele, he was selected as the podium, with the current best 'supernatural'Ramin Yamal and key Vitinya in PSG's midfield named. France Football said Dembele won the prize with a comfortable margin of victory over other competitors.
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| EPAYonhap News |
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This year's Ballon d'Or was a series of chaos. Just before the opening of last season, Kylia Mbappe received the most attention as a transfer to Real, but the first player to go ahead was Mohamed Salah. He showed great performance in Liverpool and was expected. However, Salah fell behind in the Ballon d'Or race as Liverpool was eliminated from the European Champions League (UCL) early on.
The player named after that was Yamal. Yamal led Barcelona's domestic treble last season with a stat who complied with 55 official games, 18 goals and 21 assists. Despite his young age of 17, he has emerged as a clear world-class player under Han Ji Flick. Considering the performance award, there was no shortage to become a Ballon d'Or winner.
But it was Dembele who turned the tables. Dembele was a series of twists. Dembele, who transferred with the PSG squad reorganization policy ahead of the 2023-2024 season, was one of the players who had great talent at the time of the transfer but was not highly anticipated. Such an evaluation was natural. Dembele, who transferred from Dortmund to Barcelona in 2017 and recorded a huge transfer fee of 175 million euros (about 270 billion won), rarely showed an outstanding performance in Barcelona. Along with the stigma of being the worst muktu and being unfaithful, injuries continued every season.
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Immediately after the transfer to PSG, there was a lot of concern as evaluations poured out that Mbappe's breath was in play. In the 2023-2024 season, the first season immediately after the transfer to PSG, Dembele was below expectations with 42 games, 6 goals and 12 assists. There were predictions that concerns would lead to reality. Last summer, Mbappe left for Real Madrid and not many fans evaluated that Dembele could replace the position.
It was a perfect twist. He has established himself as a persona of director Luis Enrique. Played as a PSG ace, performing perfectly in both the winger and fake No. 9. He recorded nearly one offensive point per game with 33 goals and 11 assists in 49 official games this season. He also tied for top scorer with 21 goals in the league. It's not that he lacked performance in UCL. Dembele, who scored eight goals and four assists in 15 games, showed tremendous performance with two goals and five assists in seven Champions League tournaments, including two assists in the final. Dembele eventually won his first Ballon d'Or in his career, even being credited with giving PSG its first ever European Champions League trophy. In addition to Dembele, Gianluigi Donnarumma won the Yasin Trophy and Luis Enrique won the Johan Cruyff Trophy, recognizing how outstanding PSG was last season.
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| ReutersYonhap News |
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The BBC also mentioned the story of the twist he wrote in Dembele's award. The BBC reported that Dembele won the Ballon d'Or, which he had dreamed of compassing, battling injuries, shaky performance, and questions about his attitude? Dembele reportedly changed after marrying her girlfriend in 2021 and having a baby. Many of his colleagues were surprised by his marriage. At that time Dembele essentially grew. I finally realized the importance of healthy nutrition, and over the past few seasons, I hired a French nutritionist to help me maintain a healthier lifestyle. For a while, many believed that PSG's victory depended on the performance of one of France's heroes. They also believed that the French hero would become the best player in the world. They were right. However, the hero was not Mbappe, but Dembele, who was young again.
This article was translated by Naver AI translator.
