Even at six he glided across the pitch. It’s surreal to see the same now
Michael Olise nearly took a wrong turn, now for Wembley
MICHAEL OLISE’S parents had taken a wrong turn. By the time they arrived at their son’s game, with Michael in the back of the car, it was half-time and Hayes Youth were 2-0 down. When it finished, Hayes had won and Michael had scored a hat-trick.
Olise’s coach at Hayes under 7s, Michael Richards, has a few of these stories. Like when he was stood next to a Tottenham scout the day Olise cushioned an opposition goalkeeper’s kick on the halfway line with his right thigh, volleyed it with his left foot, and sent it soaring back over the keeper’s head into the net. The Spurs coach asked to be introduced to the parents.
‘From the first training session you could see he was on a completely different stratosphere to the rest of the kids,’ Richards tells The Mail on Sunday. ‘Touch, movement, everything. He just glided across the pitch. Even at a full sprint. He would get around the pitch quicker than everyone else and always be in the right place at the right time. Even back then he was a special player.’
Olise, now lighting up the wing at Crystal Palace, joined Hayes Youth at the age of six after his parents, Vincent and Mina, had responded to an advert in the local paper, the Hayes Gazette, looking for young players to form a new team.
Another future star, Arsenal’s Bukayo Saka, played for Greenford Celtic five miles up the road. The two often went head to head. ‘It was basically the Michael and Bukayo show,’ said Richards.
‘You could see that both of them were exceptional, far above everyone else. The thing with Michael was that he was always a team player as well. It wasn’t the case of score five, six goals. He’d get his token hat-trick and then try to set everybody else up.’
Richards’ wife always suggested he keep some mementos of his time coaching Olise.
You know, just in case. One of the pictures he still has is a Hayes Youth team photo taken at the Manor Youth Summer Football Festival in 2008. Olise stands on the end of the back row, his blue-andblack shirt, far too big for his tiny frame, drooping past his knees. A medal hangs around his neck. In front of the team is the FA Cup.
Olise will today, 14 years later, walk out at Selhurst Park against Everton with the chance to take Palace to Wembley and into the semi-finals of that competition.
He’s not long turned 20. His old coaches talk of a quiet, shy boy away from the pitch but, on it, one brimming with confidence. When a Millwall fan hit him with a bottle as he prepared to take a corner during Palace’s third-round win — in which Olise scored and then set up the winner — he turned, smiled and gestured as if to ask, ‘Is that all you’ve got?’
Olise has always been seen as one of the best talents at his age in the country. His journey, though, has not always been smooth. He moved from Hayes to Chelsea’s academy, only to leave aged 14. He spent six months without a club before being snapped up by Reading. Eventually, and not without his issues, he made nearly 70 Championship appearances, was EFL Young Player of the Season and secured a £8million move to Palace. His displays this season — four goals and seven assists and twice voted the club’s player of the month — have earned him a call-up to France’s under 21 squad.
England took a keen interest, too, with Olise eligible to play not only for France and England but also Nigeria, through his dad, and Algeria, via his mum. He would have been called up by England under 21s but has opted for France.
It was while playing for Hayes that Olise caught the eye of Sean Conlan. Conlan had not long left Chelsea as a coach and was working as a scout for QPR while setting up his own company called We Make Footballers which specialises in developing young players from the ages of four to 12. He’d received a tip off about Michael Olise.
Conlan, like Richards before him, saw it straight away: the movement. ‘He was outstanding,’ he says. ‘I was drawn to his athletic potential. It was almost like he glided across the pitch.’ He recommended Olise to Chelsea academy, who signed him up to their under 9s. Olise also trained individually with We Make Footballers. ‘His football IQ is at the highest level,’ adds Conlan.
‘Pep Guardiola could have conversations with him at a very high level and he will understand everything. But he’s also a street player, which is what he’s been from the age of seven, playing outside on the estate, at school. That comes through in his technique. He thinks about football in a different way. And you see that on the pitch. He’s unpredictable.’
They still see it. ‘It’s strange,’ says Richards. ‘But the way he moves around the pitch now, the way he runs, is so similar to how he used to. It’s just an older, taller version. It’s quite surreal to watch.’
Olise left Chelsea’s academy, described as a ‘mutual decision’ by Conlan, aged 14. Olise’s brother Richard is still at the club. Olise spent a few weeks training with Man City. He also played some showcase games for We Make Footballers. It was still six months without a club. ‘It was challenging, but I think it’s helped shape who he is today,’ says Conlan. ‘Since making his way into firstteam football, it’s been a maturing experience for him. He’s always been a very polite boy. He is very humble. I think he’s found the balance now, of carrying that ability and confidence while also understanding that you still have to work hard and be dedicated. That’s why we’re seeing the player we are witnessing every week.’
It has not always been that way. The talent, yes. Mark Bowen arrived at Reading in March 2019 as technical director before going on to take charge of the first team.
He recalls: ‘He looked like a baby among the senior players but that faded straight away because you could see he had an arrogance about him, and I mean that in a nice way. He was with first-team players but you knew he had all the confidence in the world. He’d show them every day. He would take the mickey a little bit, invite senior players to come towards him when he had the ball. They tried to rough him up a bit. Not once did he stay down.’
All that skill and confidence did not immediately translate into first-team minutes. Bowen admits Olise was disappointed at remaining in the under 23s. He had issues with timekeeping. ‘He was a bit like Craig Bellamy was when I coached him,’ says Bowen. ‘If there was a session when you were working on the defensive line, he couldn’t understand that. He’d say, “What am I learning today? What am I getting out of this? Can’t we just go and play a game?” Those are the little traits that I imagine Patrick Vieira and senior players would not put up with so much.’
At the end of the 2019-20 season Bowen told him that everyone could see there was a player in there but, to reach the top, you have to back that up with numbers: goals and assists. Olise had one assist. By the end of the 2020-21 season Olise had seven goals and 12 assists. And now he’s showing what he can do on the biggest stage.
‘That’s why I think there’s so much more for him to give,’ says Bowen. ‘It seems he’s maturing. Someone asked me, “How far can Michael go?” He can go how far he wants. It’s just whether he has the mental strength — and Palace fans won’t thank me for saying this — to say to himself, “I want to play Champions League football, play for an even bigger club”. Because I think he can do it. Is he prepared to push on again? I think he is.’