Opinion: Fabian Ruiz paradox, champion everywhere, star nowhere | OneFootball

Fabian Ruiz (30) isn’t asking for any kind of campaign: for the Ballon d’Or, he’d rather “leave that to others,” as he explained this week to Onda Cero. And yet the Paris Saint-Germain midfielder is among the 30 nominees after back-to-back Champions Leagues and a World Cup. What if he mostly embodied a broader issue: our football loves stars, but is much less capable of telling the story of those who make them possible.

Football loves what fits into a highlight.

Recognized, but rarely at the center.

Fabian Ruiz isn’t really underrated anymore. In fact, it would be a bit cheeky to keep presenting him that way. He starts for PSG, starts for Spain, is a world champion, a two-time European champion with Paris, and a Ballon d’Or nominee. There have been far harsher forms of anonymity. The issue lies elsewhere: Fabian is recognized, yes, but he still rarely sits at the center of the conversation. You often have to begin by listing his honors just to convince people he belongs there.

The spectacular gesture almost always wins.

Maybe that’s because modern football loves what can be easily clipped. A goal? Perfect. A dribble? Even better. A burst of pace, a roulette, or a strike from 25 meters out? That’s exactly the kind of thing that feeds social media, TV shows, and a few debates for two days. The movement that opens up space, the pass that sets up the next one, the pressing that forces the opponent to play out down the wrong side, or the player who balances an entire team while the others take risks—that’s already much less marketable. Try making an eight-minute TikTok montage about defensive cover, and you’ll probably lose a few followers along the way.

And that is precisely why Fabian is interesting. Luis Enrique (56) notably pushed him to become more aggressive defensively, as the player himself told AS. This version of Fabian is no longer just the elegant tall left-footer who arrived from Naples. He runs, closes down, wins the ball back, pushes forward, offers an option, and above all accepts not turning every touch into an audition for the next best-of compilation. It almost sounds ordinary. It isn’t.

PSG itself doesn’t escape the game.

When it comes time to choose who goes on the poster.

The funniest part is that PSG obviously knows what it has. Without Fabian, its midfield would not have the same balance. His coaches know it, and so do his teammates. And yet, when it came to launching the little media battle around the Ballon d’Or, the club first chose to back three candidacies before refocusing its communication around Ousmane Dembélé (29) and Khvicha Kvaratskhelia (25).

You can understand why. An individual campaign also works through image, simple narratives, and players capable of immediately embodying a season. Dembélé and Kvaratskhelia attack, dribble, score, and naturally produce those moments that stick in people’s minds. If the goal is to convince voters, spreading the votes around is probably not the strategy of the century.

The symbolism is still quite delicious.

So even the club that knows better than anyone how important Fabian Ruiz is ends up obeying the codes of the kind of football story we tell. When someone has to go on the poster, you start with the ones who get the crowd on its feet. There’s nothing scandalous about that. But it’s hard to find a better illustration of the problem: between the one who makes a team better and the one who produces the weekend’s defining image, we still know very well which one will win the battle for attention.

Being essential is not always enough to be central.

Fabian is no longer invisible, thankfully.

It should also be acknowledged that things are changing. Fabian himself believes he receives the recognition that matters most to him, that of his coaches and teammates. And his presence among the Ballon d’Or nominees clearly shows that he is no longer invisible. Luka Modric’s and Rodri’s wins also reminded us that an individual trophy is not legally reserved for the player who finishes with 47 goals and a trademark celebration.

But he practically has to win everything for people to notice.

Still, there’s a strange feeling: for a player like Fabian to truly enter these discussions, he almost has to build up a résumé that would be considered obscene in others. Two straight Champions Leagues, a European Championship, a World Cup, a central role in two of the best teams around... and even so, his candidacy still feels like the one brought up at the end of the debate with a quiet little “yes, he deserves to be mentioned too.”

Fabian Ruiz doesn’t need anyone to invent an injustice to make him interesting. He speaks to something deeper. In a team sport that has become increasingly obsessed with individual trajectories, we still keep seeing more clearly the one who finishes the move than the one who makes it possible. The paradox is almost perfect: Fabian spends his time making other people’s football look better, and that is precisely what makes him harder to sell. Maybe he’s no longer the one we need to learn how to watch. Maybe it’s the game itself that we sometimes need to look at differently.

This article was translated into English by Artificial Intelligence. You can read the original version in 🇫🇷 here.