On Wednesday, Michael Olise set fire to the Glasgow night.
He changed the course of Bayern Munich’s Champions League play-off against Celtic with a thrillingly violent goal. It set Bayern on course for a 2-1 first-leg win, but focused the spotlight on a player who, increasingly, demands to be watched.
Olise has been a triumph in Bavaria. To some, that will have seemed inevitable. Crystal Palace supporters especially will need few sermons. But linger on the context; return to last summer, after he first moved to Bayern, and to the sight of Olise sat at his introductory press conference.
That day was a reminder of how harsh elite football can be. Olise was 22, had just swapped south London for Munich, and was squinting in the media glare of a global club.
What kind of player are you?
Will your abilities suit the Bundesliga in the way they did the Premier League?
You are Bayern’s most expensive signing this summer — does that put you under pressure?
Olise takes in his new surroundings back in August (Tom Weller/picture alliance via Getty Images)
In Germany, there is an insatiable appetite for Bayern news and the wrong answers in that situation can feed a news cycle for days. As it was, Olise was ridiculed for his short, blunt responses. Bild, the country’s biggest tabloid newspaper, called his appearance “bizarre” and there are all sorts of videos on YouTube, most with tens of thousands of views, mocking the discomfort of an introverted young man.
That Olise was ridiculed should give pause for thought about how young footballers are treated. That it became such a news story, though, described the intensity of the environment into which he had stepped.
It reframes everything that has happened in the eight months since.
Back in those opening weeks, Bayern released a series of short videos to mark the Frenchman’s arrival. During one, he is seen meeting many of his new team-mates and coaches for the first time; Leroy Sane, Serge Gnabry, Alphonso Davies, the manager Vincent Kompany. In one scene, Olise becomes ever-so-slightly wide-eyed when Thomas Muller appears to shake his hand and congratulate him on his move.
“And now the challenge begins,” Muller can then be heard saying off-camera.
Muller, the club’s record-appearance maker, knows better than anyone what those challenges are. Everything that happens to and around Bayern is news. Finding negative angles about the club seems often to be a sport in itself, particularly among provocative ex-player pundits for whom criticism is currency.
Every win has caveats. Every defeat is a disaster.
The list of coaches and players who have struggled in that climate is long. Thomas Tuchel and Carlo Ancelotti. Sadio Mane, Philippe Coutinho and Matthijs de Ligt. Among their other summer 2024 arrivals, Joao Palhinha is yet to settle and Bryan Zaragoza, who made last January’s loan move permanent, has been loaned out. All of those personalities are different. One commonality is that, for whatever reason, none of them were able to do their best work at Bayern’s Sabener Strasse base.
So far, Olise is.
His 11 goals and eight assists across all competitions speak to that. The expression within some of those moments — the beguiling run through Shakhtar Donetsk, the assist for Jamal Musiala at Werder Bremen, the gorgeous free kick against Bochum down in the Ruhr — describe a player comfortable with the burden of being a Bayern player in the way few are.
That’s impressive enough, but it still needs more framing — mainly because Olise joined them at a particularly difficult time, and under circumstances that were not in his favour.
Muller has recognised Olise’s quality (Rene Nijhuis/MB Media/Getty Images)
He cost around €60million (£50m; $62.3m) — at a club where that is still a lot of money — but was not a prominent name beyond the Premier League. Few of his new fans knew quite how good he was and, so, everyone needed convincing. In the press box ahead of Bayern’s first Bundesliga game of the season, at Wolfsburg’s Volkswagen Arena, it was clear some members of the German media did not really see him as a transformative player.
They were right to be cautious because this was a deal that could well have gone wrong.
Olise did not arrive with the kind of reputation that immediately reassures new team-mates. He was also a signing made by a recruiting department that was itself newly assembled. Max Eberl, Bayern’s board member for sport, had only taken up his role last February. Christoph Freund, the sporting director, had started work the previous summer.
Their work together had no track record, meaning their judgement on players came with no pre-approval. In retrospect, had this move not gone well, Olise’s failure would have been used to fuel one of those executive-level melodramas Bayern have historically had to endure.
Olise, in effect, was one of the symbols of a new regime. Complicating that was his signing for a team under an unproven head coach in Kompany, about whom there were also so many doubts.
In a different era, a player of his age and profile might have enjoyed a softer landing. He could have joined a high-powered team that was not reeling from their worst season, achievement-wise, in 12 years. He could have been used more sparingly, potentially by one of the most decorated or unimpeachable coaches in the game — Pep Guardiola, perhaps. He might also have played alongside iconic new team-mates, all still in their prime.
Olise did not have any of those luxuries, which makes him especially worthy of admiration.
He joined a Bayern team that, generationally, is really split between yesterday and tomorrow, but has been able to contribute substantially from day one. He has wanted the ball to feet, and to face defenders in their twos and sometimes threes. He wants the set-piece responsibilities and to feel the expectation of a stadium which, from pitch level, can seem a mile high.
Even ignoring the technical hurdles that Olise had to overcome, such as adjusting to new team-mates and a different playing style, these are mightily impressive accomplishments, of which his fabulous goal on Wednesday was just a literal emblem.
And there lies the irony. If that opening press conference showed a player lost in the brightness of the big club lights, then that has since been shown to be entirely misleading. Olise looks so at ease on this stage, so temperamentally perfect for Bayern.
What kind of player is he?
The right one at the right time.
(Top photo: Sven Hoppe/picture alliance via Getty Images)
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