The quiet Londoner turning into a French football great

{"text":[[{"start":6.7,"text":"Lionel Messi has been a great player for nearly 20 years, and Kylian Mbappé for nearly 10. But this World Cup has revealed a new genius. Michael Olise, 24, an introverted West Londoner who plays for France, started his debut World Cup against Senegal at outside-right. Moved to midfield playmaker at half-time, he delivered a through-ball for Mbappé to score, then took control of the game. On Tuesday, Olise delivered his crowning performance to date in France’s 3-0 thrashing of Sweden. "}],[{"start":37.75,"text":"His five assists after just four games are only one behind Pelé’s single-tournament record set at the 1970 World Cup — and Olise has up to four games left. His overhead volley that hit Sweden’s post from a stray aerial ball was a miss as memorable as Pelé’s lob from his own half against Czechoslovakia in 1970. On Saturday, football’s newest great faces Paraguay in Philadelphia for a spot in the quarter-final.  "}],[{"start":65,"text":"Olise grew up in Hayes near Heathrow airport, with a French-Algerian mother and a Nigerian father. “I actually come from four countries: France, Algeria, Nigeria and Great Britain,” he said in a rare interview in 2024. “I consider myself very lucky to possess these four parts, which all enrich me.” His mother spoke to him in French, and he’d reply in English. He was a fanatical chess player, a talented cricketer — he has said his father played the sport for Nigeria — and a footballer who spent seven years in Chelsea’s academy, then briefly Manchester City’s. However, both clubs ditched him."}],[{"start":98.65,"text":"He honed his skills playing London’s famed cage football, then got his break at Reading, in the tough English Championship — “adult football”, he comments. In his first professional season, he made a discovery about football. “It’s actually quite serious,” he told L’Équipe newspaper. “So I began to work a lot.” He had a Japanese mantra tattooed on his shin: “Every day a bit more.” After he joined Crystal Palace aged 19, the club’s coaching staff sometimes had to order him to stop training.  "}],[{"start":null,"text":"

"}],[{"start":128.4,"text":"Olise always knew which country he wanted to play for. “How do I get to the French team?” he asked his manager at Palace, the French great Patrick Vieira. And so the nation least in need of another brilliant forward was handed one without even asking. Perhaps, it was his mother’s influence, or the videos he imbibed of France’s previous great playmaker, Zinedine Zidane. English football suffered an irreparable loss. Just imagine Olise feeding Harry Kane here as he does at Bayern Munich. "}],[{"start":157.85,"text":"Thierry Henry, France’s under-23 coach at the 2024 Paris Olympics, sometimes had to suppress his instinct to shout “Wow!” when watching Olise in training. Straight after winning silver at the Olympics and still speaking little French, he joined the senior France team. That summer he moved to Bayern, where he was regarded as a winger."}],[{"start":178.2,"text":"By last season, when he was voted best player in the German Bundesliga, his specialness was obvious. Before kick-off, he performs a jump with a 360-degree rotation that had former Paris Opera dancer François Alu purring to L’Équipe: “He jumps higher than many professional dancers, while wearing studs.”"}],[{"start":198.04999999999998,"text":"“I like football to be beautiful,” says Olise. He plays with head up, in perfect balance, possessing every attacking tool. He can hit slide-rule passes, shoot, dribble, or sprint on to someone else’s passes, and is a tireless defensive presser. Some prodigiously gifted footballers make poor decisions on the field because they have so many options they could execute. Olise usually makes the optimal choice."}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":223.04999999999998,"text":"Tasked here with playmaking, he seldom plays an easy ball, but looks deep first. If Mbappé makes a run, Olise sees it. The two are perfectly complementary and share high footballing IQ. “Playing with Michael is very easy,” says Mbappé, whose six goals here so far include three from Olise’s assists. Olise’s eleven through-balls are the most at a World Cup since Spain’s Xavi Hernández notched 12 while winning the thing in 2010."}],[{"start":250.14999999999998,"text":"“He’s never a neutral player. There’s something profoundly altruistic in his game,” says Vieira, who calls Olise a future winner of the Ballon d’Or for world’s best player and already classes him among France’s great playmakers. “We had Platini. We had Zidane. Now we have Olise.” "}],[{"start":268.84999999999997,"text":"Off the field, Olise disappears. “He’s very introverted,” says France’s coach Didier Deschamps, who jokes: “Maybe it’s his British side.” Le Parisien newspaper calls him “the man who never smiles”. Once, asked by an interviewer to talk through a dramatic 94th-minute winner for Palace, he deadpanned: “Uh, I think Wilf [Zaha] passed me the ball. Shot. Scored.” Olise turns down the millions on offer from kit sponsors, which frees the fashion lover to choose boots that harmonise with his team’s kit. Inevitably, he is becoming a cult “antibrand” among Gen Zers."}],[{"start":303.09999999999997,"text":"His teammates speak fondly of him. He has reportedly learnt good, if accented, French, and been adopted by Mbappé. They share meals with reigning Ballon d’Or Ousmane Dembélé — surely the most talented table at any recent World Cup.  "}],[{"start":319.4,"text":"History is full of beautiful teams and players who didn’t win the tournament: Hungary in 1954, the Netherlands in 1974, Brazil in 1982. So far, though, Olise and France have illuminated the World Cup.   "}],[{"start":340.65,"text":""}]],"url":"https://audio.ftcn.net.cn/album/a_1783144632_2526.mp3"}