PSG stars rack up awards as 2025 individual success reflects team domination

Achraf Hakimi winning the African player of the year award on Wednesday night saw him become the latest in a series of PSG players to win the biggest individual prizes this season. In addition to Hakimi, Ousmane Dembélé won the Ballon d’Or, with fellow French attacker Désiré Doué winning the Golden Boy award, and departing goalkeeper Gianluigi Donnarumma winning the award for best shot stopper. Kang-In Lee of South Korea also received an individual honour, as the PSG midfielder won the AFC best player of the year trophy awarded to the standout Asian performer over a twelve month period.

PSG stars' individual successes highlight team domination

This collection of individual honours again highlights the success of the season just gone by for the club from the French capital, whose historic and unprecedented treble would not have been possible without the individual brilliance of both the aforementioned players and of their transformative manager, Luis Enrique.

It is an especially big honour for PSG, as prior to this year, their many superstars had never won the biggest individual awards at Paris Saint Germain. Yes, Lionel Messi won two Ballon D’ors in his time at Paris, but the first was for his final season at Barcelona just a few months after he moved to the Parisians, and the second was awarded in large part for his 2022 World Cup magic, although his 2022-23 PSG season was also relatively impressive. Dembélé, though, is the first PSG player to reach the summit of individual success football primarily for his performances in a PSG shirt.

These prior failures on an individual level were also tied to a consistent failure for those players in those PSG teams to establish themselves in the Champions League. Ligue Un domination, as remarkable as it was at points for players like Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Neymar Jr and Kylian Mbappé, was not enough on its own to secure individual glory. Indeed, those same stars were often found lacking (admittedly sometimes through no fault of their own) on the biggest stages, as PSG faced a series of comical eliminations from the Champions League.

It’s certainly fitting, and perhaps even delicately ironic, that the season in which the collective was finally prioritised at PSG, in which superstars were disposed of, was the one in which so many players from the club were rewarded with individual awards. Players like Dembélé, Hakimi and Doué are all individually brilliant, capable of lighting matches up abut have perhaps first and foremost been praised for their workmanlike attitude, their desire to track back for the team, their discipline and their defensive dedication. Individual awards aren’t everything, and certainly shouldn’t be the main objective in football, but in cases such as this they represent a broader transformation on a team level that PSG fans everywhere can be extremely happy with.