Why Dembélé's Ballon d'Or win over Yamal feels like the dawn of a new era

Fifty-nine years connected from the archetypal Ballon D'Or Award, astatine a clip erstwhile galore kick that the planetary crippled is becoming asphyxiated by systems, technology, and teams that cancel each different out, 2 street-style footballers, Ousmane Dembélé and Lamine Yamal -- 2 men whose assemblage connection lies to defenders, whose attacking anarchy makes fans consciousness volcanic joyousness and excitement -- person dominated the voting and fought retired a thrilling conflict to beryllium named the world's champion player.

The information that Dembélé led his team, Paris Saint-Germain, to their archetypal Treble by yet making them European champions, meant helium pipped the teenage Catalan genius who present becomes, by 2 afloat years, up of Ronaldo Nazario, Leo Messi and Gianni Rivera (who were each 20) the youngest ever to scope the Ballon D'Or podium.

Bronze presumption went to the laudable and exceptionally talented Vitinha. For him to triumph the glorious trophy Treble with his club, PSG, and past adhd the Nations League with Portugal, lone to inactive not triumph the astir glorious idiosyncratic trophy simply illustrates the prime of the 2 men who finished successful beforehand of him.

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But what a beauteous echo of the precise archetypal grant successful 1956 erstwhile 3 skill-heavy geniuses, Sir Stanley Mathews, Alfredo di Stefano and Raymond Kopa were held up arsenic the apical 3 players -- each of them maverick successful style. They were mesmerising, daring, pandemonium-causing diminutive men who would tally astatine defenders, instrumentality them, taunt them and nonstop the hundreds of thousands who watched them play each week astatine stadiums -- astir ne'er unrecorded connected TV -- chaotic with admiration and pulsating joy.

Back then, the wider satellite lone caught glimpses of the magicians: determination was nary internet, and nary changeless unrecorded shot connected TV. But adjacent with the advent of wall-to-wall sum and the seemingly irresistible emergence and emergence of machine planned schemes to render hostile teams toothless, to nullify endowment -- what remains contiguous is our emotion for the guys who nutrient the unexpected. We telephone them football's Rhinestone Cowboys.

Ousmane 🫂 Yamal#ballondor pic.twitter.com/aMOZ9gKXQT

Really, Dembélé and Lamine are football's assurance tricksters.

If you privation to telephone them magicians instead, that's fine. But the 28-year-old Frenchman and his 18-year-old erstwhile nine mate (at Barcelona) usage their shoulders, their hips, their eyes and, supra all, their assemblage connection to archer lies to defenders.

Their modus operandi is: I'm going this way, look, it's evident ... spot me, everything your senses archer you proves it: marque a decision, perpetrate ... OOPS! Bye-bye! The assemblage are roaring, my team's going to score, you're successful an embarrassed heap and what's worse, I'm going...