Ousmane Dembele was awarded the 2025 Ballon d’Or on Monday night, with Arne Slot having held up the Paris Saint-Germain striker as an example for Alexander Isak.Dembele lifted the Ballon d’Or trophy at the ceremony in Paris on Monday night, with Mohamed Salah somehow failing to even place among the top three.It came after a season in which PSG won five trophies, including the Champions League, which saw them knock the Reds out of the last 16.Slot was so taken with the performances of Luis Enrique’s side that it has informed the evolution of his system at Liverpool, including a big-spending summer capped with the £125 million signing of Isak.Asked earlier this month about the steps his new No. 9 must take, Slot used Dembele’s pressing game as a prime example.“Speaking about Paris Saint-Germain [last season], I don’t think anyone was surprised that I was mainly impressed by the way they press,” the head coach explained.“Ousmane Dembele was one of the examples, he was so outstanding in his pressing game.“So everybody is focused on Paris Saint-Germain, about all the goals they score, but I was mainly impressed by the way they pressed.“The moment [Isak is] fit, match fit, and can play 90, the next step is playing three times in a week 90 minutes, and then the next step is going one step further in terms of pressing.“That’s what he has to do, and scoring goals, doing special things in attack, that is something he will 100 percent sure do.”Isak is certainly not new to a high-intensity pressing game, having been among the top 14 percent of strikers in last season’s Premier League when it came to winning possession in the final third.But it is an area that Slot expects him to improve further in the months and years to come at Liverpool.Given the Swede is otherwise the full package in terms of his centre-forward play – tall, strong, quick, agile, tactically flexible and one of the best finishers in the world – it is an obvious area for him to focus on.That could in fact help push him into Ballon d’Or contention himself, particularly as Dembele had never even placed in the rankings prior to winning this year.The France international was honoured ahead of Barcelona‘s Lamine Yamal and PSG teammate Vitinha, while Liverpool’s other nominees Alexis Mac Allister, Virgil van Dijk and Florian Wirtz finished 22nd, 28th and 29th respectively.