Ousmane Dembélé: Breaking Great

A new Ballon d’Or awardee pulls the curtain on the Messi-Ronaldo era

IN WHAT WAS the most emotionally charged edi­tion of the Ballon d’Or awards, Paris Saint-Germain’s Ousmane Dembélé broke down repeatedly while accepting football’s most prestigious annual individual prize for the 2024-25 season. When the ceremony ended at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris, it did so with the 28-year-old French striker collecting the shining golden ball from former winner Ronaldinho, followed by a teary on-stage hug from his mother of Senegalese descent, Fatimata.

For the top honour, Dembélé pipped Barcelona’s teen­age sensation Lamine Yamal largely due to his pivotal contribution of 35 goals in PSG’s treble-winning season, which included Europe’s crown-jewel: the club’s maiden UEFA Champions League title in May. Dembélé’s win also ensured that for the first time since 2007, a two-year spell had passed without a player named Lionel Messi or Cristiano Ronaldo winning football’s top individual award, all but bringing to an end the great era. Before the previous season began, few would’ve expected Dembélé to be the player to carry their torch forward, given that his best years seemed to be behind him.

Signed by Barcelona for well over $100 million when he was just 20, Dembélé wasn’t as prolific as he was billed to be for six whole seasons at the Catalan club. Older, wiser and largely free of his reputation, 26-year-old Dembélé was transferred to PSG, where he immedi­ately found a way to flourish under coach Luis Enrique. The goals came easily, then the trophies for his club, followed by the ultimate honour. (By Aditya Iyer)

Noisemaker
Sonam Wangchuk – Flamethrower

Ladakh activist Sonam Wangchuk was aware that a committee comprising senior regional leaders has been formed to discuss the issues he was raising. He still upped the ante with protests. His reference to uprisings in Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka were unnecessary and incendiary. The violence on September 24 raises a lot of questions as to whether Wangchuk is interested in solutions or is an agent provocateur.

 Ideas
Umpiring

Cricket umpires rarely make it to the news anymore. And yet, two incidents came to the fore recently. One involved Andy Pycroft (not quite the on-field umpire, but his off-field counterpart, the match referee), who was probably as amused as he was perhaps shocked at having Pakistan’s cricket team set its target upon

him, once the Indian team decided to not shake hands with the Pakistani players. And the second were the encomiums that flowed after the news of Dickie Bird’s passing emerged.

Pycroft was probably shocked at such a fuss being made over him. But Bird, who was universally adored and was probably cricket’s most famous umpire, wouldn’t have been. Bird, who officiated in matches from the 1970s to his last in 1996, was someone who commanded love and respect on the field, his genial nature adept at defusing the prickliest situations. He was also an odd figure, whose eccentricities ranged from the assortment of things he carried on to the field (including a pair of scissors, with which he once cut Sunil Gavaskar’s hair because it was disturbing the batter’s vision), to the time he sat on a covered pitch at Lord’s, protecting it, when a bomb scare during a Test match led to spectators descending upon the ground.

The conditions for such an umpire to emerge do not exist anymore. The game has today evolved to focus more on the passage of play, and has little interest in umpires who exhibit liveliness. Their powers have also eroded with the emergence of DRS and the leaps in technology which have made cricket more accurate, but have taken away from the lore of the umpires of old.

Money Mantra
The Rewards of Patience

Successful portfolios grow over years, not days

VOLATILITY IS NOT necessarily a villain. Investors can also reframe volatility as a feature. Without it, all future returns would already be priced in. In India, new policy regimes, capex cycles, and demand shocks routinely push sectors from euphoria to despair and back.

Consumer credit cools after a regulatory circular, then normalises as lenders adapt. Pharma margins compress with price controls, then recover as product mixes shift. Industrial order books lull between tenders, then surge with the next round of public and private capex. These oscillations are invitations to add to durable franchises when pessimism is most pronounced.

Risk control, however, is essential. ‘Ignoring’ volatility should not mean ignoring valuation or concentration. Sensible asset allocation, periodic rebalancing, and staggered entries (through SIPs or tranches) blunt timing errors.

Having a theory for each holding—why the business wins, what could break it, what milestones to track—prevents emotion from dictating trades. For India specifically, the compounding case rests on diffusion: More people entering the formal economy, more households accessing credit and insurance, more SMEs digitising workflows, more freight moving through better roads and ports, more energy delivered with fewer losses, and more discretionary consumption as incomes rise.

Companies that convert these macro tailwinds into micro out­comes—steady volume growth, improving mix, operating leverage, prudent leverage—tend to reward patient shareholders. The inves­tor’s job is to own enough of these engines and to hold them long enough for compounding to count.

Review positions on a schedule, not on a headline. Define success as the growth of portfolio earnings over years, not the portfolio price over days. In emerging markets, impatience is expensive and patience is under-priced. If you focus on business quality, give compounding the time it demands, and treat volatility as the toll rather than the destination, you tilt the odds in favour of wealth creation. (By Ramesh Singh)

Large Hole Swallows Road In Bangkok

It looked like a scene straight out of a disaster movie. One moment everything seemed normal on this busy stretch in Bangkok. And then suddenly, the entire road seemed to be giving away. A video of that moment that since has gone viral shows a massive sinkhole appearing, swallowing cars, electricity poles and water pipes. A building, which turned out to be a hospital, just across the street, miraculously does not fall. And equally miraculously, no injuries were reported. A water leak from a burst pipe in a tunnel that was meant to extend the city’s Metro system is believed to have caused the collapse.

Andy PycroftOusmane DembéléSonam Wangchuk