Ballon d'Or 2026: France Football accuses PSG of bungling campaign that cost Dembélé

Paris Saint-Germain left the 2026 Ballon d’Or ceremony with the award for best club of the year, but without any of its players in the individual top 5. As reigning European champions, the capital club saw Khvicha Kvaratskhelia finish best at sixth, defending champion Ousmane Dembélé seventh, and Fabián Ruiz tenth.

Yet PSG’s presence in the final standings was far from negligible: eight PSG players were among the thirty nominees. Achraf Hakimi and Vitinha took thirteenth and fourteenth place, Willian Pacho twentieth, Nuno Mendes twenty-third and Marquinhos twenty-fifth. An unprecedented collective representation, but not enough to place a Parisian on the podium.

It was precisely this paradox that Vincent Garcia, director of France Football, sought to explain by targeting the club’s lobbying strategy. For him, PSG diluted its efforts by trying to promote several candidates simultaneously, when a campaign focused on a single player would have been more effective. “I think PSG’s communication perhaps wasn’t very clear in trying to promote three players, then two,” he said.

Garcia drew an explicit parallel with Kylian Mbappé, who had built a coherent and targeted campaign around his World Cup year to win the trophy. According to him, PSG should have adopted the same logic by rallying behind its most legitimate player: “They should have backed the defending champion, that is Ousmane Dembélé.”

The criticism is all the more stinging because it comes from the organization that runs the vote itself. It raises a question that goes beyond PSG alone: in a ballot where media lobbying weighs as much as on-field performance, the management of a player’s image has become a sporting lever in its own right.