Ousmane Dembélé’s Ballon d’Or is a human victory amid the toxic theatre of football

Even after a few hours of sober reflection it was still hard to identify exactly which bit of the reliably nauseating 69th Ballon d’Or ceremony was the single most nauseating bit of the reliably nauseating 69th Ballon d’Or ceremony. One thing is certain. We have a powerful shortlist here. The competition is generational. But this is also the elite, the god tier. And as ever there must be a winner.

Was it the first nauseating thing at the Théâtre du Châtelet; the crowd of otherwise normal Parisians transformed into fame-zombies, thronged against the barriers four hours before the ceremony, whooping and gawping as bored-looking blokes moved broadcast boxes around, baying at passing female TV presenters, spectating the buildup to an awards do in a state of celebrity delirium? Or was the most nauseating thing the pre-ceremony outrage in the French media, who railed at this soiree de folie because Paris Saint-Germain had to play an actual football match the same evening, postponed from Sunday because of storms, rather than being present at a fancy party, a state of fomo that seems a little at odds with the new humble non-ego PSG.

Was it just the wider phenomenon, the sense of some peak moment of personality cult, the confusion of talent with virtue, the superhero-ising of people who just happen to be very good at sport? Or is it the way awards culture coincides perfectly with the model that football’s owners want to impose, the move towards names, brands, individualism, that are so much easier to buy and sell than the old anchor points of place, culture and badge-loyalty?

See for example Fifa’s Club World Cup. See also the newest award on Monday night, the team action prize. The title suggests some vision of collectivism and humility; in reality this was basically the words “Yamal”, “Messi”, “Mbappé”, “Brazil” and “PSG” and an online shortlist that reads like the most cynically engineered act of SEO catnip. Reading it you wondered why “Britney Spears”, “What Time Is It Now” and “Dogging sites in Kent where are” weren’t also up for gongs.

Maybe it was the funny stuff at the ceremony that stood out. Early on a multilingual sexy singer appeared and sang a multilingual sexy song which seemed at one point to be actually called Multilingual Sexy. To be fair, this was also just very French. And Charlotte Cardin, who is Canadian, was great, creating energy out of nothing on an empty stage.

So that was one good bit. As was the sight of that iconic duo DJ Snake and Javier Pastore wandering on stage so that Javier could give a really earnest meandering speech while Snake stood next to him looking cool. Snake eventually did some PSG rabble-rousing before having to announce, to his own obvious battlement, that actually Arsenal Women had won team of the year, because in fact this isn’t just a PSG-hype event. The crowd booed the Arsenal players. Snake snuck back to his snug. Mainly you felt gutted for Snake. Don’t do Snake like that.

Or maybe it was all of these things. Maybe everything was equally nauseating and everyone gets to be a winner. Except, of course, this is never the full story. This is what happens with elite modern football. Just when you think you’re done with the whole thing, just when it seems to have entered the arena of the unreal, that’s then football will pull you back in, like the serial adulterer narco don husband who buys you supermarket flowers and says Noreen I’m still the man you fell in love with, and dammit he’s right. Stop it football. Stop re-seducing me.

There were a few things that did this. Sarina Wiegman: yes, a good football person. Gianluigi Buffon beaming as Hannah Hampton got her award, like a goalkeeping Gandalf. Mainly though, the thing that did this was Ousmane Dembélé winning the men’s Ballon d’Or, the most hyped award of the night.

This is the same Dembélé who plays for a state project. And the same Dembélé whose Ballon d’Or captures the beauty of that enduring paradox, the way football continues to house irresistibly-relatable human qualities no matter how you stretch it thin or inject it with toxins. Here we have not just a wonderful footballer but an uplifting human story, embodied in a nice man who just happens also to have had a brilliant year in a brilliant team. And yes, football, we’re back on. For now.

There is a trap here, too. Don’t go too far. Don’t go Full L’Équipe. Don’t make out Dembélé is both Football Jesus and a one man tactical “school” because he did a lot of high-speed pressing. Don’t talk too much about the “fulfilment of a tortuous destiny” which shows that “all stories are possible”.

This is also not bad-guy-good-guy. It’s not Ousmane versus the machine, or a case of Agent Dembélé, as online Real Madrid avatars have been quick to crow, the ruinously expensive underperformer who has now seen off the La Masia golden child. The world must always be binary, and Lamine Yamal has been unavoidably part of Dembélé’s triumph. There is something genuinely galling about the post-ceremony online outrage, the idea this preternaturally talented 18-year-old, already enriched beyond reason, fawned over by adults, wheeled around in his bath chair like a golden princeling, is in some way being victimised by not having another gong forced into his hands.

The fact is Lamine Yamal is also an underdog story, a kid from humble origins with nothing but talent to carry him. He is already, on pure brain-melting talent, the best player in the world. He will go on to win loads of these things. But he would also have been the youngest winner by three years. When the reigning holder of that mark won it, the original Ronaldo, he had just scored 47 goals in a season for Barcelona and 15 in the year for Brazil. And yes the counter to this is that no other player makes you feel like Lamine Yamal, that he is an extraordinary avatar of individualism in a systems-dominated game.

But this also doesn’t stop Dembélé being the right winner of the Ballon d’Or and in a way that is not just logical but also redemptive. Dembélé is also a victory for feeling. Like Lamine Yamal he is an exhilarating footballer, blessed with rare technique, a scorer of brilliant goals, and now the dominant attacking presence in PSG’s trans-European treble.

He has done this late in his football life, and done it when he really didn’t have to. A year ago he was out of the PSG team. Three years ago he was being hauled off in a World Cup final after a devastatingly bad 40 minutes. At Barcelona there was a meanness in his characterisation as lazy, disorganised, a junk food product, surrounded by feckless street-kid friends. In this context, the brilliance of his turnaround is that it is born out of hard work, team play, wildly committed pressing and tactical intelligence. It’s a victory for good management. And also for people getting on with each other, for turning the manager who dropped him after a row into the manager who has transformed his professional existence.

Dembélé’s Ballon d’Or says: nothing is set, that it is still possible to reach out into the corners of your own talent. And it is also possible to do this if, like Dembélé, you’re not a conventional alpha sport-dog but someone who has known doubt and uncertainty, who is notoriously wry and funny rather than loud and flash. At the end of which we have a 28-year-old man crying at a podium, hugging his mum, showing vulnerability in his moment of straight line triumph. And doing it all in the middle of the most cynically overmarketed festival of nausea.

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