{"id":233922,"date":"2025-08-07T12:14:59","date_gmt":"2025-08-07T12:14:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/abianewscentral.com.ng\/ballon-dor-2025-joe-cole-names-player-to-win-award-ahead-of-dembele\/"},"modified":"2025-08-07T12:14:59","modified_gmt":"2025-08-07T12:14:59","slug":"ballon-dor-2025-joe-cole-names-player-to-win-award-ahead-of-dembele","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/abiaradiostations.com.ng\/news\/ballon-dor-2025-joe-cole-names-player-to-win-award-ahead-of-dembele\/","title":{"rendered":"Ballon d\u2019Or 2025: Joe Cole names player to win award ahead of Dembele"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Ballon d\u2019Or 2025: Joe Cole names player to win award ahead of Dembele<br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div id=\"mvp-content-main\">\n<p>Former Chelsea star Joe Cole has backed Paris Saint-Germain midfielder Vitinha to win this year\u2019s Ballon d\u2019Or ahead of his teammate Ousmane Dembele.<\/p>\n<p>According to Cole, Vitinha ran the show during the Champions League final between PSG and Inter Milan last season.<\/p>\n<p>The former England midfielder said, as quoted by TNT Sports: \u201cI think Dembele\u2019s got to be a shout, hasn\u2019t he? How he led the line for PSG.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cVitinha, the midfield boy, I don\u2019t think it needs to constantly go to the goal-scorers as well.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cVitinha ran the show in the [Champions League] final from midfield.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI have got a soft spot for Vitinha; I think he could be the Ballon d\u2019Or [winner].\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Vitinha and Dembele are expected to be among the top contenders for the 2025 Ballon d\u2019Or following their impressive performances for club and country in the last one year.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><script async defer crossorigin=\"anonymous\" src=\"https:\/\/connect.facebook.net\/en_US\/sdk.js#xfbml=1&amp;version=v9.0&amp;appId=420332301344305\" nonce=\"sm97MhBO\" type=\"pmdelayedscript\" data-cfasync=\"false\" data-no-optimize=\"1\" data-no-defer=\"1\" data-no-minify=\"1\"><\/script><br \/>\n<br \/>Ballon d&#8217;Or 2025, Dembele, Joe Cole,<br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/dailypost.ng\/2025\/08\/07\/ballon-dor-2025-joe-cole-names-player-to-win-award-ahead-of-dembele\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ballon d\u2019Or 2025: Joe Cole names player to win award ahead of Dembele Former Chelsea star Joe Cole has backed Paris Saint-Germain midfielder Vitinha to win this year\u2019s Ballon d\u2019Or ahead of his teammate Ousmane Dembele. According to Cole, Vitinha ran the show during the Champions League final between PSG and Inter Milan last season. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":233923,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[6],"tags":[1344,1345,1346],"class_list":["post-233922","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports","tag-ballon-dor-2025","tag-dembele","tag-joe-cole"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abiaradiostations.com.ng\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233922","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abiaradiostations.com.ng\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abiaradiostations.com.ng\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abiaradiostations.com.ng\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abiaradiostations.com.ng\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=233922"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/abiaradiostations.com.ng\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233922\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abiaradiostations.com.ng\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=233922"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abiaradiostations.com.ng\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=233922"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abiaradiostations.com.ng\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=233922"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}