Ousmane Dembele has scored four goals at this World Cup, lifted back-to-back Champions Leagues, and won the 2025 Ballon d'Or. On Tuesday, France's forward walks out in Dallas for a semi-final against Spain with a rare prize coming into view.
It has been quite a year, and it is not over.
The set only ten have completed
Dembele is one of only ten players in the game's history to have won a World Cup, a Champions League and the Ballon d'Or, per OneFootball. Those are the three trophies the sport values above all others, and holding one of each puts a footballer in company that spans generations.
He collected the first in 2018, a member of the France squad crowned in Russia. The Ballon d'Or arrived last year, the reward for a season at Paris Saint-Germain that changed how the game saw him. The individual prize followed the collective one, per OneFootball and FIFA, and it confirmed a shift that had been building all season.
Here is what makes this summer interesting. A second World Cup winner's medal would sit on top of all of it, and he would collect it as the reigning best player in the world. Nothing is promised, and France still have two games to find. But the setup is unusual, and he is playing like a man who senses it.
Two European finals, one leading man
PSG's 2025 was the making of him. In the Champions League final in Munich, they took Inter Milan apart 5-0, and Dembele had a hand in the rout: an assist for Desire Doue and a through ball to release Khvicha Kvaratskhelia, per ESPN. The forward had become the man who made the champions tick.
A year on, PSG did it again, and did it the hard way. In Budapest they beat Arsenal on penalties, Dembele burying the equaliser from the spot in the 65th minute, sending David Raya the wrong way, before the shootout settled the trophy, per Yahoo Sports. That made them the first side to retain the European Cup since Real Madrid's run of three in a row from 2016. Back-to-back continental champions, and Dembele decisive on both nights.
A hat-trick inside half an hour
Then came the World Cup, and the performance that lit up his summer. On 26 June, France beat Norway 4-1 in the group stage, and Dembele had the game won inside 32 minutes: strikes in the 7th, the 20th and the 32nd, per Al Jazeera. Three goals in the space of 25 first-half minutes, and one of the fastest hat-tricks the tournament has seen.
The company it keeps is worth pausing on. The only other Frenchmen to score a World Cup hat-trick are Just Fontaine, twice over in 1958, and Kylian Mbappe, in the 2022 final. That is the whole list, and Dembele has now joined it.
He was not finished. In the quarter-final against Morocco on 9 July, he scored again as France eased through 2-0, Mbappe also on the scoresheet, per Al Jazeera. Four goals in all, which leaves him among the tournament's leading scorers as France reach the last four.
France have shared the goals around, but Dembele has been the constant. The hat-trick set the tone in the group; the strike against Morocco showed he can deliver when the football tightens and the stakes climb. Two very different games, two decisive afternoons, and a forward doing his damage from the flank while Mbappe works the middle.
Spain stand in the way
France face Spain on Tuesday 14 July in Dallas, per FIFA. It is the semi-final the draw always threatened to serve up: the reigning Ballon d'Or holder against the side many rate as the most complete team left in the competition. A place in the World Cup final is on the line.
Win it, and the final is one game away, with the chance to gild a year that already reads like a career. That is the scale of what sits in front of him. First, though, Spain, and a back line that will have watched the Norway footage more than once. Get past them, and Dembele will have earned the right to chase the single honour that would crown the lot.
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