Football Manager super fan Ousmane Dembele must be excited for the new game to drop.
During the 2018 World Cup, Dembele went viral for his quest to take the fictional Winchester FC into the Premier League in the game – and as life imitates art, the 2025 Ballon d’Or winner has reached the pinnacle of the sport himself.
Given the kind of football IQ that it takes to play under Luis Enrique though, FourFourTwo were keen to know the answer to our burning question: does Dembele owe a little of his incredible rise and his exceptional football IQ to Football Manager?
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Sports Interactive’s Miles Jacobson (R) (Image credit: Getty Images)
Miles Jacobson – the studio director at Sports Interactive, who makes FM – says no: he wasn’t expecting a mention in the forward’s acceptance speed.
“I’m not going to take any credit from Ousmane! He’s a phenomenally talented footballer who’s worked incredibly hard to get where he is,” Jacobson smiles.
“Whether it was his idea or the manager’s at Paris Saint-Germain to switch him from playing wide to playing in the middle, but the way he’s adapted to that, he’s thoroughly deserving of the Ballon d’Or and hopefully he’ll still have time to play Football Manager!
“We can take a little bit of credit for telling the whole world about him when he was a 16-year-old that no one knew anything about – but I can’t take anything away from him at all. I wouldn’t like to play against him in an online game of FM!”
Surely though, FourFourTwo pushes, his seamless transition into a false nine role must be because he’s used to the player roles in Football Manager? His tactical insight might be informed purely by his journey with Winchester…
“Anyone who works hard and thinks outside the box is going to take information from any and every source – if we are one of the sources, what an honour that would be,” Jacobson says. “I have no idea if he’s taken anything from the game or not, though.
Ousmane Dembele was crowned the 2025 Ballon d’Or winner (Image credit: Kristy Sparow – UEFA/UEFA via Getty Images)
“I’ve spoken publicly about how I send the game out to 4,500 footballers and obviously a lot of them will go into coaching: it’s been quite weird to see people playing the game as footballers, then go on to become coaches.”
Football Manager 26 is out on November 4, 2025.
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