January saw the start of a new year, and after the hectic festive period, you’d be forgiven for expecting several players to show signs of fatigue and a dip in form. Despite this, the busy football calendar pushed on as we had league action with European leagues returning from any winter breaks, domestic cup action and of course a fair bit of European football to top everything off.

This months NextGoalWinner player of the month winner is a player who despite playing just 2 leagues games in January, has shown a huge upturn in form which has led to keeping his team unbeaten in the league, pushing for Champions League qualification and winning a piece of silverware in their opening game of the month.

Ousmane Dembélé has played a pivotal role in helping PSG through their month of action as his goal was the difference in the Super Cup win over Monaco to bring more silverware to the capital, while his league goals were key to keeping PSG’s unbeaten league campaign ongoing and the strike against Manchester City provided a much needed big result to push for qualification out of the Champions League group stages.

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Match By Match

January 12th: PSG 2-1 Saint-Etienne – Starting off the year in style, PSG beat Monaco late on with Dembele providing the only goal of the Super Cup final in the 92nd minute to give PSG a perfect start to the year with silverware. Following on from this, they continued with league action as they beat Saint-Etienne thanks to Dembele once again as his 13th minute and 23rd minute finished have PSG the 3 points and continued the perfect start to 2025. With his 2nd and 3rd goals of the year, Dembele showed he can provide where PSG have arguably lacked in their attack this season.

January 25th: PSG 1-1 Reims – After a dominant victory in the Champions League in which Dembele scored yet again, his 56th minute goal prompting the big comeback win against Manchester City to keep their hopes of qualifying out of the group stages well and truly alive. Dembele kicked on once again in their only failure to win in the month as despite Dembele bagging in the 47th minute, Reims equalised just 10 minutes later to leave the scores level. With 100% of PSG’s Ligue 1 goals this month, he carried his team to silverware and a continuing unbeaten season in truly influential form. To just round things off further, Dembele then bagged a hattrick in the last game of the month as PSG secured Champions League qualification in perfect fashion as his 17th, 35th and 54th minute strikes put PSG out of reach of Stuttgart, and brought his January and 2025 total to 8 goals in 5 games, and a remarkable 66.6% of PSG’s entire goals across the month.