Are we sleeping on Michael Olise as a Ballon d’Or contender?
There is a general assumption that should Bayern Munich win the Champions League, then Harry Kane will be a frontrunner for the Ballon d’Or.
It’s a fair one to make. The England captain is leading the race for the European Golden Boot, eight ahead of Kylian Mbappe and nine in front of Erling Haaland. If England win the World Cup in the summer, then it is surely his.
And yet, there is a player that Kane’s club could take the shiny gold ball away from him – Michael Olise.
Since leaving Crystal Palace, Olise has gone from a mercurial talent to one of the most consistently excellent players in Europe and is not only a contender for the best winger on the planet but also arguably the best overall player currently kicking a ball.
Against Atalanta, Olise put in a match-winning performance, scoring two Arjen Robben-esque goals in Bayern’s thumping of the Italian side. The 24-year-old was the most influential player across the two legs against Real Madrid, capping off his performance with an excellent goal which was the last kick of the game.
But it is his ability to create more than finish chances that has been so impressive since his switch to Germany.
Olise tops the assist chart for Europe’s top five leagues. His 18 is one better than Bruno Fernandes who has played two games more and five better than third-placed Federico Dimarco.
Olise’s Bayern team-mate Luis DĂaz has played the same number of games as his French counterpart and yet has seven fewer assists.
Lamine Yamal, who many consider the favourite for the next Ballon d’Or, has played 27 and yet has seven assists less than Olise.
It is not just this year that he has excelled either. Since Olise moved to Bayern, he has set up 52 goals but what is even more impressive is the minutes he has taken to do it.
Only Julian Ryerson in the top five has played fewer minutes than Olise, and yet he is comfortably clear of all of them, and no winger in the top five leagues has more goal involvements than Olise’s 30 this season.
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Olise has also clearly taken a step up since moving to Bavaria. At Palace, he registered 31 goal involvements in 90 matches. At Bayern, that number is up to 90 in 98. He looks almost certain to beat Thomas Muller’s Bundesliga record of 21 assists in a single season.
It is easy to point to Bayern’s supremacy over the rest of the Bundesliga as the reason behind this, but Olise is doing it in the Champions League as well. He has a competition-high of six assists in the campaign this year, along with three goals.
When talking about wingers, the comparison will be made with the likes of Yamal and Vinicius Jr., and while the Barcelona youngster may have the edge in terms of goals, Olise is leading the way in creating them.
This is also with the consideration of how different Olise’s role is compared to Yamal or Vinicius. Both of the La Liga-based wingers are in the team to score goals but Olise is there to put it on a plate for Kane and the pair have combined for 18 goals this year.
Olise’s role in the Bayern squad means he is not going to get the goal numbers of a player like Yamal or even Antoine Semenyo at City, but his consistent chance creation has made him one of the best players on the planet and one of Bayern’s most important as they head into the crunch period of the campaign.
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