Michael Olise\u2019s rise to a World Cup place is notable for how uneven his early pathway was. The London-born winger spent time in several top academies before finding a route to senior football via Reading, progressing through Crystal Palace and completing a 2024 move to Bayern.<\/p>\n
Olise finished the 2025\u201326 season with 53 goals and assists in 52 appearances for Bayern and enters the tournament as a key player for pre-tournament favorite France. He signed off France\u2019s final practice match against Northern Ireland with a hat-trick and has returned to his preferred right wing after spending much of 2025 and early 2026 in France\u2019s No. 10 position. Olise\u2019s relationship with Kylian Mbapp\u00e9 could be crucial.<\/p>\n
The early stops on his journey were difficult. Arsenal, Chelsea and Manchester City all had him in their systems at youth level, but he did not remain at those clubs and Reading ultimately offered him the platform to break through. Jos\u00e9 Gomes, who was Reading\u2019s manager when Olise debuted, described the struggles that followed those early exits.<\/p>\n
\u201cBefore he was 14, he was at Arsenal\u2019s youth academy, but he didn\u2019t adapt,\u201d Gomes said. He added: \u201cChelsea kicked him out for the same reason some tried to do so at Reading: because he didn\u2019t attend classes and didn\u2019t pay attention to his studies.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gomes also recalled the Manchester City episode: \u201cAt [Manchester] City, it was because his teammates laughed at him. He had weak arms, and English boys were strong. When the fitness coach told them to do push ups, he struggled a lot, and his teammates mocked him. He felt humiliated and left.\u201d<\/p>\n
At Reading Gomes put Olise through a tough apprenticeship in training before handing him his debut. \u201cI told my players not to hold back when it came to tackling him hard in training so he could learn what professional soccer is like. Michael complained and cried … he didn\u2019t understand it at the time. I told him that if he could endure a week of his teammates\u2019 defensive actions without crying, I\u2019d call him up. In the end, it was two weeks, and when I thought he was ready, I called him up.\u201d Olise made his Reading debut in March 2019 at 17.<\/p>\n
That combination of resilience and subsequent form at Bayern has placed him among France\u2019s influential options heading into the 2026\/27 international season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Olise overcame early academy rejections to become Bayern’s creative force and France’s World Cup ace<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14250,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1062,465,961],"tags":[1446,1081,1637],"class_list":["post-14251","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bayern-munich","category-crystal-palace","category-international","tag-academy","tag-adaptation","tag-assists"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14251","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14251"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14251\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14250"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}