Michael Olise Broke Pelé’s Assist Record and Still Has Nothing to Say

Michael Olise

Photo: Bryan Berlin / CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Born	December 12, 2001 London
Occupation	Footballer
Individual awards	Knight of the National Order of Merit

The chant came down from the stands of the Stade de France in the last minutes against Belgium, and it was about the Ballon d’Or. Michael Olise had come on just after the hour with France a goal behind. He set up the equaliser for Désiré Doué, then the go-ahead goal for Rayan Cherki, then scored twice himself before the final whistle. Asked on French television afterwards what he made of the crowd, he gave the answer he gives to most questions: “I have nothing to say.” He looked embarrassed, and also like someone who had just settled an international in a quarter of an hour, which he does more reliably than almost anyone in Europe.

That gap, between what the Bayern Munich winger does with a ball and what he is willing to say about it, has followed him from west London to Bavaria. At this summer’s World Cup he made seven goals for team-mates, the most by any player at a single tournament since anyone started counting, one more than Pelé managed in Mexico more than half a century earlier. He also took twenty shots in eight matches and scored with none of them. Didier Deschamps, who handed France over to Zinedine Zidane after the tournament, put it simply: “If there’s one player who truly broke through at this World Cup, it’s him.”

Michael Akpovie Olise was born in White City on 12 December 2001 and grew up in Hayes, at the western edge of London, in a home where English and French were spoken side by side. His father, Vincent, is British-Nigerian, a church deacon who once played cricket for Nigeria; his mother, Mina, is Franco-Algerian. That inheritance gave him a choice of four countries, and England, Nigeria and Algeria all made approaches. He picked the one he says he always felt closest to. “I have always had a connection with the France national team,” he explained, “that is why I play for France.”

Chelsea took him into their academy as a small boy and let him go at 14. A short spell at Manchester City ended with months without a club, until Reading offered a trial in 2016. He made his first-team debut there at 17, off the bench in a 3–0 home defeat by Leeds United in March 2019, and two seasons later he was the EFL’s Young Player of the Season.

Crystal Palace paid the £8 million release clause in his contract in the summer of 2021. At Selhurst Park he became the first Palace player to register ten Premier League assists in a season, won the squad’s own Players’ Player award for 2022–23, and, when Chelsea came back for him the following summer, signed a new four-year contract instead. The left foot that cuts in from the right and curls toward the far top corner became his signature there. Thierry Henry, who coached him to an Olympic silver medal in Paris in 2024, described the rest of it: Olise “doesn’t play the game, he thinks the game.”

Bayern Munich bought him in July 2024 for a reported €60 million including add-ons, on a contract to 2029. His first season brought 20 goals in all competitions, more assists than anyone else in the Bundesliga and the league title. The second was larger still. He scored 22 times in 52 matches, finished the Bundesliga campaign with 15 goals and 19 assists, and struck a stoppage-time winner in a 4–3 Champions League quarter-final second leg against Real Madrid. Bayern won the domestic treble. The Bundesliga named him its Player of the Season.

Read his record closely, though, and it has a debit column. Bayern’s European run ended in the semi-finals against Paris Saint-Germain, and in the 1–1 draw in Munich that finished it he kept losing the ball in exactly the areas where he usually decides matches. Early in his France career, in a Nations League win over Israel, he gave possession away 22 times and Deschamps spoke of “lots of technical errors.” The World Cup record came with that blank in the goals column. Then there is the silence. At Palace his one-line interviews were read as arrogance until the club’s media staff began filming him in relaxed settings instead. In Munich a clip of him shrugging through a post-match interview went viral, and Jamal Musiala once took the microphone for him. Max Eberl, Bayern’s sporting director, replied that not everyone is the same. Oliver Glasner, his last coach at Palace, put it more kindly: “He does his talking on the pitch.” The trouble is that the game’s biggest individual prizes have tended to go to players whose stories travel, and Olise declines to tell his.

The World Cup showed what he does instead. Before the tournament he scored a hat-trick in a warm-up win over Northern Ireland. He laid on France’s first goal against Senegal, two more against Iraq and two in the 3–0 round-of-32 win over Sweden. France beat Morocco in the quarter-finals and lost 2–0 to Spain in the semi. In the third-place match against England, the country whose academies raised him, he set up both of Kylian Mbappé‘s goals in a 6–4 defeat; the second, a one-two finished by Mbappé, took him past Pelé’s six from 1970, the best total since records began in 1966. The IFFHS named him the playmaker of the tournament.

He has started the new season as though the summer never ended. A goal and an assist won him the man-of-the-match award in the Franz Beckenbauer Supercup against Borussia Dortmund in August. In September he scored his first hat-trick for Bayern, in a 7–0 win over Union Berlin, and was voted the Bundesliga’s Player of the Month. By early October he had eight goals in eight club matches, and his two late goals against Belgium took him to 11 for France in 29 caps. Away from the pitch he is a keen chess player, which surprises nobody who has watched him wait for a full-back to commit.

His contract runs to 2029 and, according to the club, contains no release clause. Bayern want to extend it, and press reports place Real Madrid and Liverpool among the clubs watching. Eberl has set his own deadline: “We should know by next summer whether he’s inclined to extend his contract or not.” Before that, on 26 October, the Ballon d’Or is handed out at the London Palladium, a few miles from White City, with Olise on the list of nominees. Whatever the jury decides, someone will ask him about it afterwards. His answer is already on record.

Tags: sports, athletes, 2026 FIFA World Cup, Kylian Mbappé, Ballon d'Or, Zinedine Zidane, soccer players, Crystal Palace, Michael Olise

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