Michael Olise has five assists in six World Cup matches and is one away from tying Pelé’s single-tournament record, and I’m going to need you to sit with that for a second before we continue talking about Mbappé’s goal tally.
Five assists. One from history. In a tournament this size, that is not a footnote — that is the story. The 1970 World Cup record Olise is chasing has stood for fifty-six years. Pelé set it. The same Pelé whose name gets invoked whenever someone wants to explain what greatness looks like in this sport. And right now, a 24-year-old from Bayern Munich is one perfectly weighted ball away from matching it, and the loudest conversation out of France’s tournament run is still about Mbappé’s boots.
https://x.com/RisingStarXI/status/2072097573997891822
This is not an accident. This is how the media machine processes football: goals are visible, assists are invisible. Mbappé has eight goals and three assists, and yes, that is spectacular, and yes, he is legitimately one of the best players alive. I will not pretend otherwise. But here is what Thierry Henry said — a man who has watched every minute of this France run and knows something about being the best player on a great team:
“The most important player [for France] is Michael Olise. MVP will always be Kylian, because Kylian will hit numbers that nobody can. But the most important player is Michael Olise.”
That quote should have been everywhere. Instead it lives in a corner of the internet while every highlight package leads with Mbappé’s goal against Morocco and the scoreline. France beat Morocco 2-0 in the quarterfinals and Olise played a full ninety minutes. The match recap mentioned him as an afterthought, if at all.
Olise could have played for England. He could have played for Algeria or Nigeria. He was born in London to a Franco-Algerian mother and a Nigerian father and had four national teams to choose from. He chose France, won the Bundesliga Player of the Season this year, and is in the early Ballon d’Or conversation — alongside Mbappé and Harry Kane, two players who benefit directly from his passing. Didier Deschamps called him “the link between the strikers and the defense.” Patrick Vieira called him a future Ballon d’Or winner. The people who actually watch football see it. The people who write the headlines apparently cannot.
The problem with being the most important player on a team with Mbappé is that nobody gives a damn about important when spectacular is standing right next to you. Against Sweden, everyone waxed lyrical about Mbappé because he scored. The best player on the pitch was Olise. This is a very old problem, and it is particularly maddening when the player getting erased is chasing one of the most hallowed records in this sport.
Tuesday’s semifinal is France versus Lamine Yamal and Spain in Dallas. Spain has been the best defensive team in this tournament — they’ve conceded exactly once, to Belgium. If France is going to reach a final, somebody has to unlock that defense. That somebody is not Mbappé running into a wall. It’s Olise finding the seams nobody else can see.
And when it happens, we’ll talk about the goal.
