There are no limits for Michael Olise, the perfect modern game-breaker, as Bayern Munich face Paris Saint-Germain in UEFA Champions League

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Ahead of Bayern Munich's trip to France to take on Paris Saint-Germain in the Champions League, we take a deep dive into the form of Michael Olise, one of football's great modern game-breakers.

Highlights: Bayern seal thrilling late victory over Madrid to reach semi-finals

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Everyone can remember the moment they were taught one of football's most common lessons.

Whether they saw it on TV, or if it happened to them at one of their youth games.

That moment when a player has the ball in the final third in a game their team is winning, and they try to score another goal, only for it to go horribly wrong.

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They lose the ball, suddenly the opposition are launching one last counter-attack and find the equaliser, all because they didn't take it to the corner flag.

As you read that opening - and assuming you read the title of this article - you know what we're going to talk about next.

It's Wednesday, April 15, late at night in Munich, Germany. Luis Diaz has just put Bayern Munich into the UEFA Champions League semi-finals with a sensational goal in the 89th minute. The Bavarians lead Real Madrid 5-4 on aggregate.

Five minutes later, in the final seconds of added time, Michael Olise picks up the ball on the right-hand side. He squares up to Ferland Mendy and everyone in the world knows what is supposed to happen next. He is meant to take it to the corner flag, shield the ball and see out the game.

Mendy even positions himself to show Olise down the line, clearly hoping that he can hook the ball away from the attacker to give his team one more chance.

But Olise isn't interested in what you're supposed to do.

He jinks inside Mendy and with a hilariously short backlift, pops the ball into the top corner past Andriy Lunin as if it was the easiest thing in the world. Game over.

Was the game over before that goal? Quite possibly. Was it over after his goal? Most definitely. That's what a game-breaker does.

Breaking the game, even without dominating

What is particularly interesting - and pertinent to our discussion - about the second Real Madrid game is that it was actually a pretty poor performance from Olise.

In the first game, it almost felt as if he caught Madrid off-guard, with the Spanish public stunned by the way he comprehensively dismantled Alvaro Carreras.

Here's Eurosport Spain's Adrian Garcia on the reaction to Olise's performance in Madrid: "The near-unanimous opinion about Olise after that first leg was, 'Why did Real Madrid sign Franco Mastantuono for €70m and not spend that money on Olise?'

"And the other thing that some people were saying was that Olise is exactly the kind of player that Kylian Mbappe needs to get the best out of him."

Michael Olise's heatmap against Real Madrid in the first leg.

Image credit: TNT Sports

It wasn't even as if Madrid put in extra effort when it came to stopping Olise in the second leg. Yes, starting Mendy over Carreras is always a defensive move, but it's not as if Vinicius Junior suddenly decided to start tracking back.

It was just a game where he didn't have as many opportunities. But he still found a way.

And it is the manner of the goal as well. We've already covered the audacity in even going for goal rather than taking it to the corner flag, but it's more than that.

To call the 'gap' that Olise chooses to shoot into a gap is doing a disservice to the very concept of gaps everywhere.

This isn't The Shining, where Jack Nicholson is trying to force his head through a gap from the door being slightly open. This would be like Nicholson seeing the door creak and then trying to ram his head through it.

The idea that Olise could get the ball around Mendy and into the top corner, out of Lunin's reach, is positively absurd.

'Top, top quality!' - Olise scores another stunner as Bayern rack up the score against Atalanta

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Eurosport Germany's Thomas Gaber says that this kind of ambition is what stands out about Olise at the moment: "99 out of 100 players would have run with the ball to the corner flag against Real Madrid with the score at 3-3 in the 94th minute to run down the clock.

"Olise, on the other hand, picks up speed again and scores a brilliant goal to make it 4-3. His attitude and his hunger to constantly improve make him an extremely valuable player for Bayern."

Built for the big time

Olise's stats this season speak for themselves. Just look at these numbers for players in Europe's top five leagues across all competitions:

No-one has more than Olise's 25 assists.
Only Harry Kane (59) and Kylian Mbappe (46) have more than his combined 44 goals and assists.
Only Lamine Yamal (118) has created more chances than his 116.
Only Yamal (45) has created more big chances than his 40.
Only Yamal (429), Vinicius Jr. (291) and Jeremy Doku (257) have attempted more than his 229 dribbles, whilst only that trio plus RB Leipzig's Yan Diomande have completed more dribbles than his 103.

Olise's player profile for the Champions League this season, courtesy of Opta, highlights how elite he has been:

Michael Olise's Champions League performance.

Image credit: Opta

None of this is new, of course. Even when he was playing at Reading and Crystal Palace, Olise always loved the big moments.

Chris Byfield and Jonathan Bray are two Palace season-ticket holders and can remember the moments they knew Olise was destined for the top.

"It was our second goal in a 2-1 victory against Manchester City at the Etihad in 2021," Byfield says. "The ball comes to a 19-year-old Olise in the box. A good 90% of players of his age would have panicked and shot, or perhaps tried to beat their man.

"In the chaos, however, Olise takes a perfectly weighted touch, to put the ball on a plate for Conor Gallagher to finish. It was small decisions like that, and the precision in which he executed them, that set him apart from his predecessors."

Bray picked out a game a year later, against the other team from Manchester: "The 4-0 win against Manchester United during the 2023/24 season.

"It will probably go down as the best individual performance I've seen from a Palace player. It was also the first time that I genuinely thought he could go on to win the Ballon d'Or.

"The way he targeted Casemiro, a multiple-time Champions League winner, was unlike anything I'd ever seen at Selhurst Park before, even from top attacking talents like Wilfried Zaha and Eberechi Eze."

Highlights: Kane and Bayern too hot for Real in Bernabeu first leg

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Byfield is keen to stress the exceptional nature of Olise's decision-making and how that set him apart: "Palace have a long, storied history of tricky, expressive wingers.

"In recent years, we’d seen Zaha grow from an exciting, lanky Ronaldinho impersonator to our greatest ever player, while we had watched Eze the previous season show flashes of brilliance.

"What I’m essentially saying is that the Palace fanbase are very winger-literate. And we could tell Olise was different.

"He wasn’t as raw as his predecessors. He perhaps had fewer tricks than a young Zaha had, and didn’t glide quite as well as a young Eze, but everything Olise did was so absurdly precise.

"His cross was always perfect, his touch was always immaculate, and what set him apart from others his age is he always made the right decision. It wasn’t normal, and we all knew it."

As Gaber explains, Olise hasn't been fazed at all since moving from south London to Munich: "Olise was expected to improve Bayern's attacking play.

"But nobody anticipated he’d make such an immediate impact. He’s an absolutely exceptional player and had no trouble settling in Germany.

"For me, Michael is – alongside Harry Kane – Bayern’s best signing since Arjen Robben in 2009, in terms of value for money."

'Trademark Michael Olise!' - Winger doubles Bayern's lead with a beauty

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A 2026 for the ages?

Only nine players have won the Champions League and the World Cup in the same year (10 if you consider Julian Alvarez in 2022 as part of the same year, given it was the same season).

Six members of the West Germany side in 1974 also won the European Cup with Bayern Munich that year. Christian Karembeu then triumphed in 1998 with Real Madrid and France, Roberto Carlos also did it with Madrid and Brazil in 2002, and in 2018 Raphael Varane repeated Karembeu's feat.

Could Olise do the same in 2026? Bayern have at least a 25% chance of winning the Champions League and France will go into the World Cup as one of the favourites.

We have discussed his importance to Bayern, and he will be equally vital to France in the summer.

"He's the link between midfield and attack for now, playing as the No. 10 for France," explains Eurosport France's Cyril Morin.

"We have exceptional power but only Olise has the kind of profile (maybe with Rayan Cherki a bit), to be able to handle the rhythms of the game, playing in different positions.

"He has in a way replaced Antoine Griezmann in his ability to create things in the midfield area as well as scoring or making the decisive pass on a regular basis.

"The debate isn't about whether or not he'll play, it's much more about whether France stick with just three up front - Olise, Kylian Mbappe, Ousmane Dembele - or add a fourth attacker into the equation."

France double their lead through Olise's wonderful curled strike

Video credit: TNT Sports

Speaking ahead of the PSG game, Karl-Heinz Rummenigge, legendary former Bayern player and CEO and current member of Munich’s supervisory board, used the past to illustrate just how valuable Olise is.

"Let me tell you a story from the past," Rummenigge told t-online. "In 2009, we had an incredible offer from Chelsea for Franck Ribery. At the time, it would have been a new world transfer record.

"I then went to our then-CFO, Karl Hopfner, and Uli Hoeness with this offer. We discussed it for two hours, trying to figure out what to do with it.

"That day, we made a fundamental decision: that in the future, we would never sell a player we would miss on the pitch.

"And this unwritten rule still applies today. For a player like Olise, there's no price tag that would make us flinch."

In an ideal world, every great player would always dominate every game they play in. But we don't live in that world. Even Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo had games where they couldn't have the impact they would have wanted.

So the way a great player can elevate themselves to being elite is by finding a way to leave their mark on the game.

It's been one of the noticeable traits about Lamine Yamal's remarkable rise with Barcelona, and Olise is no different.

Bayern have a lot of great players, and sometimes he won't get as many chances as he would like, but this season he has excelled in still having those moments of magic, and that is what makes him special.

Could it end with a Champions League-World Cup double - and, as a result, the first Bayern Munich men's player to win the Ballon d'Or since Rummenigge in 1981? With Olise, it wouldn't be surprising.

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