The 10 best footballers in the world: Dembele, Yamal, Haaland ranked

A new king of the global game was crowned at the 2025 Ballon d'Or ceremony, with Paris Saint-Germain's Ousmane Dembele becoming the latest name to follow in the footsteps of football icons including Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo to claim the most prestigious individual prize of all.

The former Borussia Dortmund phenom sauntered up to the Theatre du Chatelet stage to collect his glittering golden ball, on account of being voted the world's best player by a panel of esteemed journalists for his remarkable feats in the 2024-25 campaign.

Dembele propelled PSG to a long-awaited first Champions League title with eight goals and six assists from 15 appearances in the competition, contributing to an astronomical 51 goal contributions from 53 games as Luis Enrique's men also claimed Ligue 1, Coupe de France and Trophee des Champions glory.

The France international pipped the likes of Lamine Yamal, Raphinha and Mohamed Salah to become the latest first-time winner of the Ballon d'Or, but does that make the France international the current best player in the world in our eyes?

Here, Sports Mole casts its vote for the 10 greatest active footballers on the planet right now.

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10: Rodri

After being named the world’s greatest footballer by winning the Ballon d’Or in 2024 while his knee was in a brace following an ACL tear, Rodri's importance only grew more to Man City when their form fell off a cliff in his absence.

Despite having barely kicked a ball over the last 12 months, Rodri has remained front and centre in most conversations about City, as their third-place finish and trophyless campaign was largely attributed to his absence in midfield.

Rodri scored the winner in a Champions League final that clinched the treble for City, before being named Player of the Tournament at Euro 2024, where he was a champion with Spain, so despite the 2024-25 campaign being a write-off, and question marks remaining about when the Spaniard will make a full recovery, he still deserves a spot in this list.

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9: Mohamed Salah

For the best part of a decade, Salah has epitomised everything good about Liverpool: being all-action, ruthless and a winner.

In 2024-25, Liverpool's Egyptian king had arguably his finest season to date, scoring 29 and assisting 18 in a truly astonishing Premier League season that resulted in him hoisting the title aloft and winning a plethora of individual accolades by the end of it.

It is therefore no surprise that the Premier League, FWA and PFA Player of the Year ranks in this list, though he has fallen down the rankings in recent months following a below-par start to the 2025-26 season, scoring only four goals in his first 11 top-flight matches.

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8: Achraf Hakimi

Few players illustrate just how much the game has changed over the past decade or so than Hakimi, whose attacking ability from right-back was a leading factor in Paris Saint-Germain finally ending their Champions League hoodoo back in May.

Hakimi was utterly remarkable on PSG’s run to glory, scoring four and assisting five goals on the continent, while also putting up equally-impressive numbers as the club cruised to the Ligue 1 title.

The Moroccan even continued that form into the Club World Cup, scoring two and assisting two across four successive matches, as Luis Enrique’s men reached the final. Since then Hakimi has chipped in with two goals and three assists for a PSG team who sit pretty at the top of Ligue 1 and occupy a place in the top five of the 36-team Champions League standings.

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7: Michael Olise

Michael Olise has elevated his game to new heights since joining Bayern Munich from Crystal Palace in the summer of 2024 and he can now be considered as one of the world's best wingers.

The technically-gifted and skilful 23-year-old won the Bundesliga title and was named the division's Rookie of the Season after a sensational debut campaign in Germany in which he contributed wit 20 goals and 23 assists in 55 appearances across all competitions, breaking an array of records in the process.

Olise continues to play an integral role for Vincent Kompany's side this season, registering seven goals and seven assists in 17 games for a supreme Bayern outfit who won 16 games in a row before being held to a 2-2 draw with Union Berlin in the Bundesliga prior to November's international break.

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6: Vitinha

The unheralded hero from PSG’s dream season was midfielder Vitinha, who formed a fantastic partnership with his partners-in-crime Joao Neves and Fabian Ruiz, becoming an excellent trio in Luis Enrique’s midfield, and are both unfortunate to miss out on this list in their own right.

In the knockout stages of the Champions League, no midfielder could boss games as easily as Vitinha, who was instrumental in each round, whether that was against Liverpool, Aston Villa, Arsenal or in their dominant win over Inter Milan in the final.

If the club season was not enough, Vitinha then went on to win the UEFA Nations League with Portugal, playing 120 minutes in the final with Spain, and scoring one of their five successful spot kicks.

This term, Warren Zaire-Emery (1,260) is the only outfield player to play more minutes for PSG than Vitinha (1,237), who has already registered eight assists in 16 matches across all competitions while operating in a deep-lying midfield role.  

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5: Ousmane Dembele

While Hakimi and Vitinha, among others, all played their part in winning the quadruple for PSG, no player had quite the impact of Dembele, whose performances in 2025 made him the clear favourite for the Ballon d’Or.

After not scoring double figures for goals in any league season since his breakout at Rennes in 2015-16, Dembele went and netted 21 as PSG cruised to the Ligue 1 title, while the winger also contributed to 14 goals in the Champions League.

Dembele had scored 15 goals in 2025 by February 11 this year, which equalled the most he had ever managed in a calendar year, illustrating how electric his form has been over the past few months, and he also became the first PSG player ever to score hat tricks and back-to-back games, away to Stuttgart and Brest in the space of three days.

In 2025-26, Dembele has struggled with injuries and has only contributed with three goals and two assists across nine matches, which is one reason why he has slipped down the rankings.

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4: Kylian Mbappe

While there was no major first-season silverware for Mbappe at Real Madrid, as he watched on and saw his boyhood club PSG lift an elusive Champions League crown, it was another phenomenal campaign for the French forward.

Following his high-profile move from PSG, Mbappe scored 43 goals across all competitions, with an eight-game stretch at the end of the season, which also includes France’s two UEFA Nations League matches in June, resulting in 12 goals and two assists.

Mbappe will be as determined as ever to win the Champions League now after seeing his former teammates do so, which will also aid his pursuit of a first Ballon d’Or - another key factor in his decision to move to the Santiago Bernabeu.

The 2018 World Cup winner has made an electric start to the 2025-26 season, scoring 18 goals in just 16 matches to help Real Madrid climb to the top of La Liga and move into the top seven of the 36-team Champions League standings. 

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3: Harry Kane

Where would Bayern Munich be without Harry Kane?

The England captain has been a revelation at Bayern since joining from Tottenham Hotspur in 2023, scoring a total of 108 goals and providing 29 assists in 118 appearances across all tournaments, wit 75 of those strikes netted in just 73 Bundesliga matches.

Kane won the Bundesliga Golden Boot in his first two seasons with the German giants and he is already in the driving seat to win the award for a third successive year, as he has found the net 13 times in Bayern's opening 10 league games, with Kompany's men accumulating 28 points from a possible 30 available in that time.

Bayern's prolific No.9 has also scored five goals in four Champions League matches in te 2025-26 campaign, as well as four strikes in tw DFB-Pokal games and oe goal in the German Super Cup final, taking his goal tally to a remarkable 23 goals in just 17 appearances this term. At 32 years of age, Kane is showing no signs of slowing down!

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2: Erling Haaland

Despite coming under fire for not helping Manchester City to any trophies in the 2024-25 season, Haaland still hit over 30 goals yet again for Pep Guardiola’s men, maintaining his place as one of the world’s most-feared strikers.

The Norwegian, who has broken a plethora of goalscoring records during his time at the Etihad Stadium, has made a sensational start to te 2025-26 season, scoring a remarkable 28 goals in just 18 appearances for club and country.

Nine of those goals have been netted across only three World Cup qualifiers, including five in Norway's 11-1 demolition of Moldova in September to fire his country to the brink of their first major tournament this century. At the age of just 25, Haaland is already Norway's all-time leading goalscorer with 51 goals in just 46 appearances.

For Man City, Haaland leads the way at the top of the Premier League scoring charts with 14 goals in just 11 matches; only in two league games (against Tottenham and Aston Villa) has Haaland failed to score. In the Champions League, however, City's No.9 has scored in each of his first four League Phase fixtures this term, netting five goals to date.

Haaland, who has scored over 60% of Man City's goals in all tournaments this season, netted his 99th Premier League goal in the Citizens' statement 3-0 win over Liverpool before November's international break, and he will become the fastest player in the division's history to reach 100 goals if he scores at least one in any of his next 16 matches.

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1: Lamine Yamal

While not the recipient of the Ballon d’Or, there is only one player who can currently top this list, and it is Barcelona’s new number 10: teenage superstar Yamal.

Making his Barca debut at 15, and becoming a regular at 16, Yamal was one of the first names on Spain’s teamsheet at a victorious Euro 2024 after an impressive breakout season in 2023-24, and after being named Young Player of the Tournament, and scoring one of the competition’s greatest goals in the semi-final versus France, he has gone from strength to strength.

A domestic treble followed, where Yamal was a shining light for the Catalan club, and even though they fell to a 7-6 aggregate defeat to Inter in the Champions League semi-finals, it will be tough to find a better pair of performances from a single player across two legs of a knockout tie in the competition’s history - that is how special a talent the 18-year-old is.

Yamal has since made a sparking start to the 2025-26 campaign, contributing to 12 goals (six goals, six assists) in 11 matches for Barcelona across La Liga and the Champions League, while he has also recorded three goals and three assists in his last four international outings for Spain.

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