Ousmane Dembélé has been voted the Guardian’s best male footballer of the year for 2025 by a margin of 128 points ahead of Lamine Yamal. Considering our 219 judges handed out a total of 179,580 points (820 each) it shows how close this year’s ranking was.
Two-hundred and 16 members of the panel had Dembélé and Lamine Yamal on their voting slips but the main difference was that 101 of them had the Frenchman top while 33 had the 18-year-old Spaniard first.