{"id":1089079,"date":"2026-07-14T17:36:40","date_gmt":"2026-07-14T17:36:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1089079\/"},"modified":"2026-07-14T17:36:40","modified_gmt":"2026-07-14T17:36:40","slug":"frances-world-cup-star-michael-olise-is-a-very-different-kind-of-footballer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1089079\/","title":{"rendered":"France\u2019s World Cup star Michael Olise is a very different kind of footballer"},"content":{"rendered":"

Get free access to the most comprehensive World Cup coverage in The Athletic app<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Everything is carefully scripted.<\/p>\n

An hour or so before kick-off in Dallas today (Tuesday), France\u2019s newest superstar<\/a> will emerge from the tunnel to inspect the pitch.<\/p>\n

Except this won\u2019t be a normal pitch inspection. It will be a Michael Olise pitch inspection: a languid walk towards the fringe of the playing surface, a couple of scuffs of his trainers on the grass and a quick glance around the stadium before returning to the sanctuary of the dressing room. Blink and you\u2019ll miss it \u2013 at least until it goes viral on social media again.<\/p>\n

Forty-five minutes or so later, when Olise returns for the warm-up, there will be pink boots, the colourway of choice for the sport\u2019s biggest brands this summer<\/a> \u2013 everywhere you look. But Olise won\u2019t be wearing them \u2013 well, not unless France surprise us by playing all in pink in their World Cup semi-final against Spain. Olise likes his footwear to match the rest of his kit, which is easy to do when you don\u2019t have an individual boot sponsor; wear what you want, when you want.<\/p>\n

In the warm-up, Olise kicks the ball as high as he can into the air before controlling it effortlessly. On one occasion at Bayern Munich, he nearly took out their manager Vincent Kompany and a television crew with a wayward punt. Sprinting across the pitch in a rare show of panic, Olise arrived just in time, beautifully bringing down the ball with all the softness of your head hitting the pillow after a long day.<\/p>\n

In another part of his matchday routine, Olise runs, leaps and performs a 360-degree spin in the air in the seconds leading up to kick-off, making him a photographer\u2019s delight (some brilliant images are doing the rounds) and drawing praise from an unlikely source.<\/p>\n

\n

\ud83d\udc10 pic.twitter.com\/ts4hdMvPc0<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 Equipe de France \u2b50\u2b50 (@equipedefrance) July 9, 2026<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\u201cHe jumps higher than many professional dancers,\u201d Francois Alu, a French ballet dancer, told the French sports paper L\u2019Equipe. \u201cAnd on top of that, he\u2019s wearing boots on a pretty soft surface that doesn\u2019t really allow for any spring. That\u2019s quite\u2026 astonishing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Finally, the France kick-off. Olise always takes it and boots the ball straight out of play. It feels totally at odds with how elegantly Olise plays football that he\u2019s tasked with doing that, and yet it\u2019s also strangely befitting of a man who seems full of contradictions.<\/p>\n

Sean Conlon, who has known Olise since he was six years old and coached him at various stages during a football journey that was far from straightforward<\/a>, smiles at the aura and mystique that surrounds arguably the most fascinating player at this World Cup.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s becoming marketable now, the whole nonchalant thing,\u201d Conlon says.<\/p>\n

\u201cFrom a psychological point of view as well, it separates him. It means that he\u2019s not putting pressure on himself. He\u2019s just staying focused on his football, and he\u2019s got this mystery around him as well. I really like his Instagram. He\u2019ll delete all his posts. He\u2019s done that for 10 years. And whenever he does a post, it has no caption. It\u2019s all connected to making him this enigma, I think.\u201d<\/p>\n

Enigma is a good word. There are so many layers to Olise and his extraordinary talent; just don\u2019t expect him to explain them.<\/p>\n

September 2024, Weserstadion. Bayern have just won 5-0 at Werder Bremen in the Bundesliga. Making his fifth appearance for the club, following a \u00a350.8million ($67.9m at the current rate) transfer from Crystal Palace of England\u2019s Premier League in the summer, Olise was outstanding, scoring twice and assisting twice.<\/p>\n

\u201cRight, let\u2019s go,\u201d the Bayern midfielder Jamal Musiala says to Olise, as the two of them reach the bottom of the stairs in Bremen\u2019s stadium.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s hard to suppress a smile as you watch the footage that follows, which was filmed by Michel Schroer, a journalist with German newspaper Bild.<\/p>\n

Unprepared for what\u2019s around the corner, Olise takes one look and performs an emergency stop. He starts to stretch a hamstring that doesn\u2019t need stretching and turns on his heel. It\u2019s like he\u2019s seen a ghost.<\/p>\n

Musiala carries on walking, oblivious to the fact that his new team-mate is no longer by his side until two of Bayern\u2019s media staff, one with a microphone and another holding a camera, scamper back to the stairs, where Olise is hiding.<\/p>\n

Pointing towards the post-game flash interview area, they gesture for him to come back \u2014 something that isn\u2019t going to happen without Musiala\u2019s intervention.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou don\u2019t have to say anything,\u201d Musiala says to Olise, sounding like a lawyer briefing his client before the police turn on the tape recorder and the interrogation starts.<\/p>\n

\u201cA\u2019ight,\u201d Olise replies, as he steps down the stairs for a second time.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ll talk for you,\u201d says Musiala, who previously played alongside Olise at Chelsea\u2019s academy.<\/p>\n

Wearing a pair of headphones, Olise shuffles back into view.<\/p>\n

Musiala turns to him before the interview starts. \u201cThis is the start, you know. Part of the life.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s \u201cpart of the life\u201d that Olise would happily do without.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs a footballer, you have to give your answers on the pitch first and foremost,\u201d Olise told Bayern\u2019s club-members magazine shortly after signing for the German giants.<\/p>\n

\"Olise<\/p>\n

\n Olise shuns the publicity that comes with being an elite footballer (Maddie Meyer \u2013 FIFA via Getty Images)<\/p>\n

In 2022, Olise scored a stoppage-time winner for Palace against West Ham United in the Premier League, making him an obvious candidate for a post-match interview. To give you a clue as to what\u2019s coming next, when Sky Sports put the footage on YouTube<\/a>, it was titled, \u2018The shortest post-match interview ever?!\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cJust talk us through it?\u201d the reporter asked.<\/p>\n

\u201cThrough what? The goal?\u201d Olise said, deadpan.<\/p>\n

\u201cMmmm-hmm,\u201d replied the reporter.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think Wilf (Wilfried Zaha) passed me the ball. Shot. Scored,\u201d Olise said, not showing a flicker of emotion.<\/p>\n

The reporter laughed. \u201cNice and brief,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Olise, looking nonplussed, nodded.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a moment that captured the game, that won the game. What\u2019s the feeling like when the ball does hit the back of the net?\u201d the reporter continued.<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah, it\u2019s a good feeling,\u201d Olise said.<\/p>\n

\u201cDo you feel you deserved it overall?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah,\u201d replied Olise.<\/p>\n

The interview caused a stir at the time and, inevitably, led to all sorts of comments about a monosyllabic footballer. Some people wondered if Olise was being difficult, while others thought he wasn\u2019t very bright.<\/p>\n

For the record, Olise is quick-witted and smart. He scored 127 in an IQ test in 2024.<\/p>\n

As for his football intelligence, it\u2019s off the scale.<\/p>\n

What makes Olise so different to other footballers?<\/p>\n

Christopher Hamill, Alexander Barker<\/p>\n

Halfway through the 2020-21 season, Veljko Paunovic called Olise into his office to discuss his development.<\/p>\n

Paunovic, now the Serbia national team\u2019s head coach, was the manager of Reading \u2014 then in the Championship, English football\u2019s second division.<\/p>\n

As for Olise, he had not long turned 19 and was playing his first full season in senior football, one which would end with him being named the three-tier, 72-club English Football League\u2019s young player of the year after scoring seven goals and registering 12 assists.<\/p>\n

Paunovic still has the seven-page document he presented to the teenager that day. There are separate team graphics showing Olise\u2019s contribution (goals, assists and chances created) across three different positions \u2014 left-winger, right-winger and No 10 \u2014 as well as half a dozen or more areas for him to target for improvement, including working on his right foot, his heading ability and becoming more ruthless in front of goal.<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause we always thought that he could score more goals, and it looks like he prefers to assist rather than score,\u201d Paunovic says. \u201cBut this is something that is a part of his character, I believe.\u201d<\/p>\n

What was Olise\u2019s interaction like with that presentation?<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a great question,\u201d Paunovic replies. \u201cHe was very quiet. He would observe. He was focused. It\u2019s not like he was looking around the room.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs a player, I never had these kinds of conversations with my coaches, and I would like to have known what the coaches really thought about me. And I think this is what caught his attention \u2013 you\u2019re talking about him, and there is no bulls\u2013t in this. This is what he is, and this is what he has to improve, or can improve, if he wants to commit.\u201d<\/p>\n

Paunovic scrolls to the next page, which is titled \u2018Set pieces\u2019.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat he liked more was this part \u2014 because he wanted to take penalties for us,\u201d Paunovic says.<\/p>\n

\"Michael<\/p>\n

\n Michael Olise was determined to take penalties for Reading (Bryn Lennon\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n

\u201cI said, \u2018Look, I need you to practise. You can\u2019t just show up and say, \u2018Hey, I\u2019m taking penalties\u2019. I\u2019m not gonna throw the coin in the air with you. I want to see if you\u2019re capable of being efficient taking penalties\u2019.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd in my head was this, \u2018Michael, if you want to take penalties, and you prefer to assist, who are you going to assist when you take a penalty?\u2019.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo I want to see that ruthless, killer instinct you have to have in order to take penalties. After training, when you stay behind, I want to see that those balls really go into the net.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo, answering your question, \u2018yes\u2019, \u2018no\u2019, \u2018maybe\u2019 \u2014 a lot of those. But this was, I think, profound for him. He had something in front of him where he could evaluate our vision against what he had in his head, and I believe we were pretty close to what he wanted to hear from us.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMichael was a cool kid,\u201d Martin Kelly, a former Palace team-mate, says. \u201cHe wasn\u2019t interested in any of the fads of the modern-day game \u2014 playing FIFA (the video game) or getting caught up in social media. He let his football do the talking.\u201d<\/p>\n

Occasionally, that football talked him into trouble at Palace, albeit in strange circumstances.<\/p>\n

\u201cI remember he kept doing the same thing in training once \u2014 and which Patrick Vieira (Palace\u2019s manager at the time) never wanted him to do: getting the ball, being direct and trying to beat a player, instead of playing it inside and getting it from a one-two off a No 10 to then break a line,\u201d Kelly explains.<\/p>\n

\u201cPatrick ended up sending him in from training. I hadn\u2019t seen anything like that for years. But Michael was that strong-willed at such a young age. You\u2019re getting coached by someone who has won everything in the game (as a player for France and clubs including Arsenal, Inter and Milan), but Michael Olise was just not bothered in the slightest. He was so unfazed. A maverick.\u201d<\/p>\n

Olise spent much of his childhood training at professional academies in England, predominantly with Chelsea, who released him at the age of 14, and later Manchester City, who also let him go<\/a>. Clearly, those experiences contributed to his development as a young footballer, together with his time at Reading\u2019s academy, where he finally blossomed.<\/p>\n

Yet when you watch Olise play and you see the sort of things he\u2019s capable of doing with a football, you also can\u2019t help but wonder how much of his ability is innate.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think that coaching will have played an enormous part in Michael\u2019s life, really, or that he will need to thank coaching for a lot of what he\u2019s able to do,\u201d Roy Hodgson, Vieira\u2019s replacement at Palace, says. \u201cWhatever happened, Michael doesn\u2019t need coaching now.<\/p>\n

\"An<\/p>\n

\n Olise\u2019s balletic brilliance is a feature of his football (Justin Setterfield\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat he needs now is to be put in the right position on the field of play alongside players who are good enough to play with him, to feed him with the ball and to make the necessary runs so that he can show all his attacking ability.\u201d<\/p>\n

That pretty much captures exactly what Olise has got with this France team at this World Cup and goes some way to explaining why he has been able to thrive. The fact that he has got what Hodgson describes as \u201cGod-given ability\u201d helps, too.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was watching Messi the other night, and Messi reminds me of him a little bit,\u201d Hodgson says. \u201cHe gets himself into positions and people feed him the ball under a lot of pressure, and he finds his way out of it, and finds the right pass, and of course, like Michael, he\u2019s got that weight of pass.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m now talking about probably the greatest player in the world, so if he (Olise) considers himself close to that, he\u2019s doing pretty well.\u201d<\/p>\n

In an interview with L\u2019Equipe last year \u2014 a collector\u2019s item \u2014 Olise cited the influence of Messi on his style of play as well as Brazil\u2019s Neymar, but also explained that he wants to be true to himself, and that goes for how he lives his life off the field, too.<\/p>\n

When Hodgson reflects now, he wishes he\u2019d had a chance to know that person behind the footballer better.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe is quiet. He wasn\u2019t easy to speak to,\u201d Hodgson says. \u201cI maybe respected a little bit too much his desire to be left alone. I certainly never pushed him. When it came to interviews, I knew that he didn\u2019t like them. Occasionally, people would say to me, \u2018You should tell him he\u2019s got to do more (media work)\u2019, but I respected who he is and what he likes to be.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cJust pause it now,\u201d Conlon, Olise\u2019s former junior and youth coach, says.<\/p>\n

It is the build-up to France\u2019s first goal at this World Cup, against Senegal. Olise is on the ball, on the French right, about to set up Kylian Mbappe with a wonderful disguised pass.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\u201cDid you know Michael plays a lot of chess?\u201d Conlon asks. \u201cJoe Shields, who\u2019s the head of recruitment at Chelsea, when he was at Manchester City, he was the one that brought Michael to City. I remember having lunch with him and we were talking about Michael and what he was achieving. He was recalling when he was at City, it was Michael\u2019s first day and he was in one of the waiting rooms and he\u2019s reading a chess book. At 14, a boy who has come up from London! They were like, \u2018Who\u2019s this kid?\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you play a lot of chess, there\u2019s moments when you see into the future. Sometimes (in football), it can become quite instinctive, you\u2019re going a little bit off a feeling and you\u2019re seeing pictures of attacks that are not necessarily obvious. When this happened against Senegal, I\u2019m really wondering at what point did Michael work out what he was going to do.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis shape here (shown in the image below); 70 per cent of players in the World Cup are delivering a ball to that back-post area for a header. I wonder, is he now having the connection with Mbappe and seeing that ball to thread through, and he\u2019s already planned it at this moment, like a chess move?\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"\/<\/p>\n

Some movement patterns are well-rehearsed on the training ground; others feel more instinctive \u2014 the product of improvisation and, in the case of Olise and Mbappe here, a meeting of minds. \u201cIt seems that he and Michael have got really strong telepathy with each other,\u201d Conlon adds. \u201cBecause class recognises class, they would feel that they\u2019re the best and so they know how to connect with each other.\u201d<\/p>\n

A showreel of clips moves on to the round-of-32 game against Sweden.<\/p>\n

\u201cLook at the little dance he does now, how he passes this,\u201d Conlon says, as Olise rests one foot on top of the ball while offloading it with the other for a little one-two.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Why does he do that?<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause he\u2019s a west London boy and he cares about flair and he cares about style. He\u2019s a showman!\u201d Conlon says, laughing. \u201cIt\u2019s unnecessary, but isn\u2019t it so beautiful?<\/p>\n

\u201cBut this is also what I\u2019m saying about his personality; to be a real winner and take the game by the scruff of the neck. The shot that follows: that won the corner that got France the first goal and unlocked Sweden.\u201d<\/p>\n

Olise is different, that\u2019s for sure \u2014 different as a person and different as a footballer.<\/p>\n

In the last-16 game against Paraguay, he played an extraordinary volleyed pass. It barely got a mention at the time because the clock was running down and everybody was far too preoccupied with Paraguay\u2019s ugly tactics, but it\u2019s a moment of artistry and beauty \u2014 a pass that was so good team-mate Desire Doue didn\u2019t start running until after Olise made contact with the ball because, quite frankly, how on earth could the winger have expected it?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\u201cOh my god,\u201d says Conlon, laughing. \u201cIt has come into his path, so it curls for him (Doue) to run inwards \u2014 it\u2019s got backspin on it, too! It\u2019s so nuts, and it\u2019s all done deliberately.\u201d<\/p>\n

Conlon shakes his head and smiles.<\/p>\n

\u201cMichael\u2019s so special. The sky\u2019s the limit for him.\u201d<\/p>\n

For now, it\u2019s all about trying to navigate a way past Spain tonight to have a shot at winning a first World Cup.<\/p>\n

Just don\u2019t expect Olise to get carried away if France are crowned champions on Sunday. Celebrations, much like interviews, aren\u2019t really his thing. At Bayern, he hid his face behind the Meisterschale trophy when he reluctantly, and half-heartedly, lifted it after being cajoled by his team-mates, who couldn\u2019t help but laugh.<\/p>\n

Staying cool with the smaller World Cup trophy in his hands could be trickier, but you wouldn\u2019t put it past him.<\/p>\n