Two lines, and the holder had said his piece
He did not need long. Ousmane Dembele sat down with France Football on Tuesday morning, got the question about the 2026 vote being wide open, and answered it in a couple of sentences: “I don’t think this trophy is up for grabs. I think it will stay in the hands of a Paris Saint-Germain player.”
The timing was not an accident. Twenty-four hours earlier Kylian Mbappe had made his own pitch, and made it loudly: “I made history this summer in the most prestigious competition. But there is still a long way to go.” That one went down badly on both sides of the Pyrenees, where plenty read it as a man marking his own homework.
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He still put Mbappe on his podium
Dembele did not freeze out his France team-mate. Asked for his own top three, he went with “Kvara, Harry Kane, who had a very, very good season, and I think Kylian Mbappe”. Himself? Off the list. “I never vote for myself.”
Then he kept going. Michael Olise, who he rates as the best player in the Bundesliga last season. Lamine Yamal. Fabian Ruiz. And Willian Pacho, the name he thinks everyone has quietly skipped over.
Two players, two completely different approaches. Mbappe sells Mbappe. Dembele keeps steering the conversation back to the dressing room he plays in. When journalists hold the votes, that distinction is not nothing.
Nobody has done this since Ronaldo
The context sharpens the quote. Back-to-back Ballons d’Or have become rare: Cristiano Ronaldo took the last pair in 2016 and 2017, and before that Lionel Messi strung four together. Every year since, a new name.
Dembele knows all of that, which is presumably why he moved the target. Tip a Paris winner, leave yourself out of it, and an individual award turns into a club argument. PSG have plenty of representation on the 30-man shortlist.
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