Ballon d'Or: Video reveals Mbappé and Dembélé were no longer in contact

A video captured backstage at the Ballon d’Or ceremony on Monday in London has reignited questions about the state of relations between Kylian Mbappé and Ousmane Dembélé. It shows the Real Madrid player asking his France teammate for news about his injury — a first point of contact that, according to several observers, speaks volumes.

“If you’re mates, or even very close mates with someone, as they claim to be, you check in on them as soon as they get injured,” analyzes journalist Loïc Tanzi. “This means that between Ousmane Dembélé’s injury and Monday, they didn’t speak to each other.”

The sequence comes in an already tense context. Mbappé, narrowly beaten by Harry Kane in the final Ballon d’Or vote, had made multiple public statements to defend his legitimacy to win the trophy — an insistence that, according to several sources, had upset his French teammate.

The seating arrangement at the ceremony did not dispel doubts. Michael Olise was seated between the two forwards, a configuration that Tanzi deems significant: “It’s no accident that they weren’t sitting next to each other, if the organization decided not to put them side by side.”

The two players have so far downplayed any rift, calling for people not to “over-interpret” their exchanges. But for the L’Équipe journalist, the assessment is clear-cut: “Relations are still strained, or even very strained. There needs to be a very good discussion, and someone in the middle, for things to patch up.”