From Barcelona cast-off to Ballon d’Or winner: How ‘footballing genius’ Ousmane Dembele proved everyone wrong at Paris Saint-Germain

The award caps off an incredible career turnaround for the France international, who signed for PSG in 2023 after a difficult six-year spell at Barcelona, who he had joined in a deal worth up to £135.5 million.

After a middling season and a half in Paris, PSG boss Luis Enrique moved Dembele from wide right to centre-forward in a game against Lyon on December 15.

The 28-year old went on to score 30 goals for the Ligue 1 giants from that point.

“The second thing is it’s an incredible story, in how he transformed his game and how he proved the doubters wrong.

“But for him to go from not much, despite all the talent that he’s always had, to the best player in the world, is just an incredible journey. He deserves a lot of credit for it. Luis Enrique and PSG do as well.

“Overall, what he represented for this PSG team that was so incredible from December to June, not just with his goals and assists but with his pressing and counter-pressing, his leadership, how he was decisive in all the key games – the Champions League final, semi-final and quarter-final, in the league and the French Cup – I think he’s a wonderful Ballon d’Or winner.”

As a teenager, Dembele was considered a French footballing prodigy, earning a move from Rennes to Borussia Dortmund in the summer of 2016, after netting 12 Ligue 1 goals and being named the league’s Young Player of the Year the previous season.

The Frenchman went on to score six times and contribute 13 assists in 32 Bundesliga matches during his time at the Westfalenstadion, before continuing his rapid assent to football’s summit by signing for Barcelona for, at the time, a club-record fee.

However, Dembele’s career in Catalonia was marred by concerns over his professionalism and punctuality as well as a spate of fitness issues, with the player sustaining 14 muscle injuries while at the Camp Nou.

Dembele only showed flashes of his supreme talent at Barcelona, though his then-manager Xavi prophetically insisted in 2021 that “when used properly, he could become the best player in the world.”

“I don’t know if Barcelona will care that much that they let him go, but if you remember some of the things that Xavi said in Ousmane’s last season, Xavi knew there was a special player there,” Laurens said.

“On the good days I think even (Lionel) Messi at times was impressed by the talent Dembele had.

“But that’s the thing. He’s always been so talented. He was born a footballing genius.

“If you talk to people that watched him when he was six or seven years old, and then at the Rennes academy when he was 13 or 14, they had never seen anything like this before or since.

“He was just that good. And it took him a lot of time to fulfill that potential, he stagnated a lot when he was at Barcelona, and he just had to find the right context for him to finally fulfill all the potential and shine. That context was given to him by Luis Enrique.”

On Dembele’s transformation under Enrique, Laurens added: “The most impressive thing is the work rate that he’s producing for PSG.

“He understood and realised for this team to go far and win things, and for him to shine, he had to set the tone by being the first one to hassle the opposition and press and run after the ball, like we saw in the Champions League final.

“He was ready to pounce on Yann Sommer and the Inter defence. But he’s done it all through the second half of last season, relentlessly.

“He never gets tired, keeps running and running and pressing and pressing. That’s something that (Kylian) Mbappe didn’t do and didn’t want to do and he’s still not really doing much.

“There will be a lot of people that didn’t really believe Ousmane could reach those heights. Now there are a lot of players that will try to imitate him.

“They’ve understood that work rate in football nowadays is probably even more important than the goals and the assists that you can give to your team.”