Ballon d’Or: Ousmane Dembele expected to win… but PSG team-mates will miss it

The league cited article 548 of their competition rules, which stipulates that if a fixture is postponed due to bad weather then it should be played or continued the next day. The match has been rescheduled for 8pm local time, one hour before the Ballon d’Or ceremony begins at the Theatre du Chatelet in Paris.

The Ballon d’Or, an award that was created by the French sports magazine France Football in 1956 to crown the previous season’s best player, was first won by Blackpool and England’s Stanley Matthews. PSG have had only one winner of the men’s top prize, Lionel Messi in 2021, who is also the only winner of the award to be playing in France since Jean-Pierre Papin of Marseille in 1991.

Dembélé, who scored 35 goals and provided 16 assists last season, was not named in PSG’s initial squad for the trip to Marseille as he is still recovering from a hamstring injury, and he is therefore expected to attend the ceremony.

He will be joined by fellow Ballon d’Or nominees Désiré Doué and João Neves, who were also ruled out for the fixture through injury. However PSG’s other nominees, namely Achraf Hakimi, Khvicha Kvaratskhelia, Nuno Mendes, Fabián Ruiz and Vitinha are all set to play in the rescheduled fixture in Marseille. Gianluigi Donnarumma, now of Manchester City, is also nominated.

The England captain Harry Kane, Real Madrid’s Kylian Mbappé, Liverpool’s Mohamed Salah and Barcelona’s Lamine Yamal are also expected to be contenders for the men’s trophy. The frontrunners for the women’s award include Barcelona’s Aitana Bonmatí, Clàudia Pina and Alexia Putellas, Arsenal’s Alessia Russo and Chelsea’s Lucy Bronze.

PSG have won all four of their opening league matches and are top of Ligue 1, while Marseille are eighth with two wins.

Ballon d’Or

Click here to read article