EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. — Michael Olise is a magician and France has a new hero as he put on a show in New York City on Tuesday.
Olise drifted around the pitch and looked totally at one with the ball as France dismantled Sweden to reach the last 16 of the 2026 men’s World Cup. It is mesmerizing to watch just how unfazed he is by it all. His display was art.
It was the kind of individual performance you dream about seeing live. Olise was playing a different game. When he was subbed off the pitch late on France’s head coach Didier Deschamps embraced him warmly on the sidelines. It was a special moment after a truly magical display.
Olise hit the post with an incredible flying overhead kick in the first half, which would have been one of the all-time great World Cup goals. He set up Bradley Barcola for France’s second goal with a sumptuous nutmeg. Then he set up Kylian Mbappe for France’s third with a perfectly weighted pass to take out the entire Swedish defense. He went close to scoring himself on several occasions too.
Olise was everywhere. Like a true magician he just pops up out of nowhere and creates things to make people gasp in delight. The fans in the heat of New Jersey did that often when Olise was on the ball. He was applauded, often, in the press box too.
“Michael is playing top-notch football, and after a very good season, and he needed a bit of time to set his marks, but he has a major influence within the squad that he is very complimentary with the other team players in the attack,” France head coach Didier Deschamps explained after the game. “And then match after match he has more automatic issue things that he can implement. And then when he has the ball, then it’s great, and he also gives the ball to the strikers, and he is the link between the strikers and the defense, and then in the middle he helps out a lot as well.”
All of the best playmakers make it look effortless like Olise does. He seems unbothered by anything and he’s the crucial new heartbeat of France’s already stacked attack. He has five assists in their opening four games of the World Cup.
Mbappe, Barcola, Desire Doue and Ousmane Dembele are scoring the goals, but watch what Olise is doing. He’s at the heart of it all, orchestrating attack after attack, starting in the middle but drifting out to either flank with such nonchalance. His movement is effortless. His touch is deadly.
¡FRANCIA GOLEA A SUECIA Y SE METE A LA SIGUIENTE RONDA!
— Telemundo Deportes (@TelemundoSports) June 30, 2026
Con doblete de Kylian Mbappé, la selección francesa avanzó a Octavos de Final con autoridad.
Revive lo mejor del encuentro: pic.twitter.com/XmdTyR8825
Former France captain and World Cup winner, Patrick Vieira, managed Olise at Crystal Palace and labelled him a “future Ballon d’Or winner” on ITV in the UK at half time of this game.
Speaking on Fox, Thierry Henry lauded Olise.
“What he does off the ball is second to none. People always stay with what the guy does on the ball, usually when you’re that type of guy, technical, sometimes you forget about your defensive duties. He doesn’t. He thinks about the game. Michael is a freak,” Henry explained. “The way he sees stuff is just not the same way others can see stuff. What a player, I had the privilege to coach him, sometimes he was doing stuff in training that you need to hold yourself from saying ‘wow’ because you’re a coach and then you talk to your assistant and say ‘did you see what he just did?’ This guy is on another planet. He is different. MVP will always be Kylian Mbappe because he will put up numbers nobody can do. But the most important player [for France] is Michael Olise.”
France’s fans agree.
“The new piece of having Michael Olise in the team is like the new heart of France. He’s playing as a number 10 and playing super well. So even Rayan Cherki can’t get in because Olise is too good,” France fan Hugo Reich told us recently.
38 - France's Michael Olise has been involved in 38 open play attacking sequences at the 2026 FIFA World Cup (13 shots, nine chances created, 16 build ups to shot), the most of any player.
— OptaPlay (@OptaPlay) July 1, 2026
Involved. pic.twitter.com/DvZtqiwRbA
“He almost scored the best goal of the World Cup when he did the flip, it was so unfair. He is a very good player. He does the job every game and we are very lucky to have him,” a joyous French fan with his face painted in the tricolor, Gregory Bernon from Lille, beamed afterwards about Olise’s starring role.
But Olise’s star role for France is a relatively new one. He didn’t play at the last World Cup in Qatar in 2022. In fact, he didn’t make his debut for France until after the European Championships in 2024.
But he’s never looked back.
Five years ago Olise was playing in England’s second tier for Reading. He then signed for Crystal Palace and became a very good player in the Premier League and signed, quite surprisingly, for Bayern Munich in 2024.
He has dazzled in his first two years in Germany, winning the Bundesliga player of the season in 2025-26, and Real Madrid had to publicly deny their interest in signing him this summer as reports swirled about his future.
Olise is shy, reserved and rarely speaks much in interviews. He just cares about football. His focus is clearly in the right place.
Born in London to a Franco-Algerian mother and a Nigerian father, Olise could have played for four different countries. But he always wanted to play for France. This was his dream.
He had to wait his time to become a regular for France but now France, even with all of their wonderful world-class forwards, can’t function anywhere near as well without Olise.
“They rotate with a lot of players. They come in different positions. They’re not static. They know each other well in how they move and the connection between each other. So of course when they have that quality and that movement, it’s going to be tough. But I think we defended well for a while, and then of course after a while it’s difficult to keep it like that for 90 minutes,” said Sweden’s Viktor Gyokeres of France’s incredibly fluid attack which Olise was influential in.
When we look back at the story of this World Cup we will most likely remember how good this France side was, probably en-route to winning it all, and marvel about Kylian Mbappe’s goalscoring records.
But what we should really remember is the magician pulling the strings to make this French attack purr.
Over the last two years Olise has come from nowhere to be France’s heartbeat and the key to their hopes of World Cup glory.
“Yes, he’s also in this category. He has been in this category for a very long time,” Deschamps said when asked if Olise is in the same category as Mbappe. “And with regards to what Michael does, with Bayern Munich and what he does in our squad: He is in his category. And Michael is an introvert, a bit of an introvert, but he’s very sensitive. But the good thing is that he’s not introvert on the pitch, he has a lot of personality, and then the relationship between the attacking players is very good on a human point of view as well, because it’s better, because I’ve known other periods when this was not necessarily the case, and they talk the same language in football, so it’s going in the right direction.”
Additional reporting from NBC News’ Doha Madani and Tim Rohan
