Michael Olise is France's brain

Futi’s World Cup coverage continues with a guest blog from Jake Burgess.

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At just 24 years old, Michael Olise already feels like he’s lived several lifetimes, all of them blessed. There was Reading in the Championship, where he won Young Player of the Season. Crystal Palace, where he and Eberechi Eze tore up the Prem. Bayern Munich, where he made his name as a global superstar with a staggering 25 goals and 28 assists last season.

And now, finally, the World Cup, where as usual he made his debut with a bang. Eligible for Nigeria, Algeria and England, the distinctly English-accented Olise instead chose France, and yesterday against Senegal, in the most star-studded lineup on the planet, he was the best player on the pitch.

Let’s start with some stats, shall we?

• Man of the match for France with a 73 futi rating (including a 90 skill rating for Creating and 82 for Dribbling)

• 14 phases won (most in the match)

• 0.9 expected assists (ditto)

• 4 shots assisted (do we need to keep including this parenthetical?)

• 6 progressive passes (yep still most in match)

• 5 passes into the penalty area (most again)

• 52 touches in the attacking third (and again)

• 4 progressive carries (actually not the most!)

• 3/3 successfully completed take-ons

That’s a pretty good day at the office.

Digging deeper, though, I think these numbers reveal something more interesting. Olise didn’t just play well. He showed signs that he could become the focal point of France’s whole glittering attack.

Olise spent much of the first half operating as a right midfielder-slash-winger, often starting on the right and then tucking in when Jules Kounde pushed up from right back. Although he wasn’t necessarily bad in this role, you could almost sense that Olise was restless, waiting to be set free.

France never quite got comfortable in their opening setup, and Senegal finished the first half with more expected goals and surprising share of the momentum (which futi measures using teams’ maximum possession value at each moment).

Part of what makes Olise so fascinating is that his stardom doesn’t come with much noise. He has a nonchalant aura on and off the pitch, rarely seeming rushed or overwhelmed. Even in the biggest games of his life, his body language hardly changes.

That calmness allows him to process the game differently. When defenders are scrambling and teammates are speeding up, Olise often looks like the only player operating at his own pace.

At the start of the World Cup, Thierry Henry said Olise “doesn’t play the game, he thinks the game.” When I first heard that quote, I wasn’t entirely sure what he meant. After watching this match twice (my girlfriend was understandably less pumped about the second viewing), I think I get it.

Olise is so technically gifted that he rarely appears to think about the mechanics of football itself. The passing, dribbling and touches are almost automatic to him. His attention is entirely focused on the game around him. I’m not sure there are more than a handful of players in world football capable of “thinking” the game at this level.

My brother and I have an admittedly unscientific theory about elite players: sometimes they become so good that the team starts to bend around them. While the star may be fine, the team suffers for it. Real Madrid scored plenty of goals through Kylian Mbappe this season, yet the collective often looked less than coherent. We’ve occasionally seen it with the USMNT when Christian Pulisic tries to be both the creator and the finisher rather than simply attacking space.

Olise feels different. Even when he became France’s focal point in the second half, he organized the attack for his teammates rather than demanding that it revolve around him. He doesn’t reduce the freedom of players like Mbappe, Ousmane Dembele and Desire Doue — he unlocks them. While Olise handles much of the vision, central movement, timing, ball progression and decision-making responsibilities, the others are then free to do what they do best: make runs, attack space, isolate defenders and score.

To show you what I mean, let’s look at Olise’s highest possession value actions against Senegal. According to futi’s model, these were the actions that had the greatest positive impact on France’s probability of scoring and not conceding in the next ten actions.

Unsurprisingly, Olise’s most valuable action was his delicious assist for Mbappe’s opening goal. The pass sliced through four Senegal defenders and perfectly into Mbappe’s path, requiring only a simple turn and touch at the edge of the six to redirect it into the net.

Number two on our list came in the 52nd minute. Instead of finding Mbappé or Dembélé in the box, Olise took matters into his own hands: he received the ball, beat his defender off the dribble and generated a dangerous shot of his own.

Olise is a nightmare to defend against because in addition to setting up his teammates on a platter, he can also generate this kind of chance for himself. I may look like a dummy when France starts Rayan Cherki in the middle for game two, but I genuinely believe France discovered something during that second half against Senegal. To get the best version of this team, they need to tap into Olise’s balanced attacking skill set.

Like the assist we started with, action number three is a throughball to Kylian that split Senegal’s defense and found Mbappe in stride in the box. Imagine how out of hand things might have gotten if France’s all-time leading scorer could finish.

The story of Olise’s supernova second half against Senegal isn’t about take-ons won, passes completed or even the pair of assists. It’s that France may finally found their focal point: the guy who can do everything everywhere all at once while making his teammates better; a calm young star who can “think the game” for everyone around him.