Ousmane Dembele won the Ballon d’Or yesterday crowning him the best player in the world. The Frenchman made a name for himself right from the start of his career and was touted as having a genuine chance of winning this award at some point when he was only a teenager.
If you were to look at him at say, eighteen and then again yesterday, with no knowledge of what happened in between, you’d probably assume his career turned out exactly as it should have.
The truth is vastly different and Ousmane’s career was riddled with the lowest troughs. His dream move to Barcelona was plagued with injuries, fans of football globally mocked him, and he drastically underwhelmed on the pitch during his stint there.
My memory isn’t short, I remember how far Ousmane appeared from the potential he seemed to have as a young man. That’s why his win was so special to me.
It was a symbolic victory. This was a player who pulled everything together perfectly in his prime in a completely non-linear way. He didn’t improve gradually. This was a fairly sudden marrying of all the parts of Dembele that were being worked on over years in the background.
There’s a brilliant Steve Jobs quote that comes to mind. He said you can’t connect the dots looking forward. You can only see how all the dots are connected when you look backwards. Whatever Dembele experienced through his turbulent career were the pieces, were the dots, that made sense on Ballon d’Or night.
In the moment it’s hard to understand what is happening and why it’s happening but perhaps Ousmane needed the struggles he endured. He learnt about the value of discipline, sleep, recovery and structuring a week to best optimise for every performance. For a player as naturally talented as he was, these were things he didn’t care for as much – as a youngster.
The pursuit of something great is exciting. I’m always fascinated to learn how the greats achieved greatness in their respective fields.
What I often learn from said greats is that there is a non-linear journey somewhere, with sudden spikes in success in which many parts of their life seem to magically become relevant despite seeming unnecessary or irrelevant at the time.
Things have a weird way of working themselves out and at the right time, rather than at whatever time you thought was right.
My name is Umir, I am a doctor, a football correspondent for BBC Sport, and a perpetual learner.
On UMIR VS THE WORLDº, I reflect on trying to live a complete life without sacrificing the important things.
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