Credits: S. Plaine / Wikimedia Commons — CC BY-SA 4.0.
On Monday May 11, at the Palais Brongniart in Paris, the UNFP Awards crowned Ousmane Dembélé, Pierre Sage, and Melchie Dumornay. Yet the official rankings published by the UNFP are not just a list of winners. In one evening, they condense the 2025-2026 soccer season, but also several deeper through lines: the economic weight of PSG, RC Lens’s rise, the UNFP’s union role in representing players, and the still-unfinished transformations of women’s soccer.
Dembélé’s Double Confirms PSG’s Sporting and Financial Power
According to the UNFP’s official rankings, Ousmane Dembélé kept his Ligue 1 Best Player trophy and also won the Just Fontaine Award for the best goal, the evening’s only trophy decided by public vote. For the rest, the UNFP specifies that players, coaches, and referees each vote within their category, in a process that is “strict, supervised, and confidential,” with 96% participation last year and 95% of votes cast in person in the locker rooms.
This system matters, because it gives Dembélé’s award a broader professional significance than a simple image-driven win. It reflects his peers’ view of a season dominated by PSG in the most visible categories. Désiré Doué, also a Paris player, was named Ligue 1 Best Young Player, further reinforcing PSG’s overwhelming weight in this Ligue 1 season.
The economic context sharpens that dominance. In the latest financial reports published by the LFP and the DNCG, resource concentration remains high: for the 2022-2023 season, the top three clubs accounted for 43.9% of Ligue 1 audiovisual rights revenue. In the individual accounts published by the LFP, PSG already appeared, on its consolidated scope, as an outlier club with €569.7 million in operating revenue and €503.2 million in personnel expenses for the 2020-2021 fiscal year. Even accounting for seasonal accounting fluctuations, the order of magnitude shows why Paris individual awards do not depend solely on talent. They also stem from a structural ability to concentrate players, visibility, and performance.
Lens Imposes a Different Model, Tighter Financially and Clearer Sportingly
Against that power, RC Lens stands as a credible counter-model. Pierre Sage received the Ligue 1 Best Coach trophy, awarded by fellow coaches. Robin Risser, meanwhile, was named Best Goalkeeper. Two honors that reward not so much brand effect as collective coherence.
The figures available in the 2024-2025 individual accounts published by the LFP highlight this difference in scale. Lens reports €68.8 million in operating revenue, €59.8 million in personnel expenses, and a negative net result of €9.7 million. That is a very long way from Paris’s financial mass. The message of the rankings becomes more interesting here: the UNFP is distinguishing a club capable of producing performance, professional recognition, and sporting value without the same economic leverage as PSG.
That gives Sage’s trophy institutional as well as tactical meaning. In a French soccer landscape weakened by audiovisual uncertainty, the LFP was already stressing particular vigilance as early as summer 2024. Clubs’ financial situation made that cash-flow focus necessary. The board meeting minutes of August 2, 2024 mention a distribution of €490.9 million to clubs for 2024-2025. This took place amid overall pressure on resources and reflection on savings to be made. In that landscape, Lens stands as the example of a club improving through organization and bench work. In other words, it relies on sporting development rather than salary inflation alone.
The UNFP Awards Also Say Who Speaks for the Players
The ceremony is not institutionally neutral. The UNFP is not just an event organizer. On its website, the union says it “defends the rights and interests of all players who play in France.” The 2024-2025 version of the Professional Soccer Charter also places it among the signatories of the collective bargaining agreement for soccer professions, alongside Foot Unis and UNECATEF, to regulate employment, training, working conditions, and social protections for workers in the sector.
In other words, the UNFP Awards are not just a season-ending ranking: they are also a representation mechanism. The fact that players vote for players and coaches choose the coach of the year gives the awards a quiet political weight. And the union running the ceremony reinforces that dimension. These awards stage the idea that professional soccer should not be told only by broadcasters. It should not be narrated only by owners or league executives either. It should also be told by its employees.
That point resonates all the more because the UNFP has, in recent months, multiplied its positions on workload, social protection, and players’ place in soccer governance. Even without becoming a platform, the ceremony shows that in France professional recognition comes through a union framework. It also sets it apart from a simple marketing exercise.
Women’s Soccer Goes Beyond Dumornay’s Crown Alone
Among the women, Melchie Dumornay was named the best player in Arkema Première Ligue. The award confirms OL Lyonnes’ central place, but it is not enough to describe the state of the sector. FFF official data first show an expanding base: 251,369 women’s licenses were counted as of June 30, 2024, or 10.5% of all federation licenses. The Federation notes that women’s participation has grown by 10% per year for the past ten years. In addition, 4,000 amateur clubs have at least one women’s team. Also, 8,000 clubs have at least one female license holder.
This growth does not mean economic balance has been achieved. It shows that a professionalization movement is underway, supported by the federation’s engagement plan and the FFF’s diversity plan. However, gaps in resources between sections remain significant. The official Arkema Première Ligue standings for the 2024-2025 season show Lyon’s dominance and the widening of the top of the table. OL finished first with 62 points, ahead of PSG on 52 and Paris FC on 45.
In this context, Dumornay’s crown matters because it confirms a benchmark. But the trophies for Mylène Chavas at Paris FC as best goalkeeper, and Justine Rouquet at Montpellier as best young player, tell a different story: a more competitive league, where several clubs are now involved in developing talent and producing results.
A Ranking That Captures a Season, and a Balance of Power
The rest of the evening rounds out the picture: Zuriko Davitashvili was named Ligue 2 Best Player, Michael Olise Best French Player Abroad, and Didier Drogba received the UNFP-Fondaction Citizen Player trophy. Here again, the rankings go beyond simply handing out awards. They aim to cover the whole professional field.
That is what makes this 2026 edition interesting. Dembélé embodies the showcase of an ever-more central PSG. Sage and Risser show that a club like Lens can still impose a different logic of performance. Dumornay reminds us that OL Lyonnes remains the beacon of women’s soccer, even as competition broadens. And the UNFP, in the background, reminds us that French soccer is also a world of work, with its votes, representatives, collective agreements, and governance battles. The real meaning of the UNFP Awards is probably this: yes, they tell the story of the season, but they also tell who has the power to define it.
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