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 was 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 the one when he was stood next to a Tottenham scout the day Olise cushioned an opposition goalkeeper’s kick to 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 Tottenham scout turned and 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.’
Michael Olise has enjoyed an excellent season playing in the Crystal Palace midfield
Olise, now lighting up the wing at Crystal Palace, joined Hayes Youth at the age of six after his parents, Vincent and Mina, 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. 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-and-black shirt, far too big for his tiny frame, draped past his knees. A medal hangs around his neck. In front of the team, with the boys on the front row clutching a piece of it, is the FA Cup.
Olise (back right on top row) in a Hayes Youth team photo taken at the Manor Youth Summer Football Festival in 2008
Olise will on Sunday, 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 same 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 thrown from the crowd as he prepared to take a corner during Palace’s FA Cup third-round win — in which Olise scored and then set up the winner — he responded by turning, smiling and beckoning towards them 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, tough, has not always smooth. He joined 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 some issues, he made nearly 70 Championship appearances, was named EFL Young Player of the Season and secured a £8million move to Palace under Patrick Vieira.
His performances this season — four goals and seven assists in all competitions as well as twice being voted the club’s player of the month — have earned him a call up to France’s Under 21 squad.
In a clash at Millwall, Olise brushed off a hostile reception from fans in a show of confidence
England took a keen interest, too, with Olise eligible to play not only for France and England but also Nigeria, through his dad, or Algeria, through his mum. England Under 21s wanted to call him up but he chose to represent France.
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It was while playing for Hayes that Olise caught the eye of Sean Conlon. Conlon 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, who specialise in developing young players from the ages of four to 12. He’d received a tip-off about a young lad named Michael Olise.
Conlon, like Richards before him, saw it straight away: the movement. ‘He was outstanding,’ he tells The Mail on Sunday. ‘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,’ says Conlon.
‘Pep Guardiola could have conversations him at a very high level and he will understand everything. But, at the same time, he’s also a street player, which is what he’s been from the age of seven, playing outside on the estate, at school, wherever possible. That comes through in his technique. He thinks about football in a different way. And you see that when he’s on the pitch. He’s unpredictable.’
Olise’s youth career saw him battle against the likes of Arsenal star Bukayo Saka
They still see it, even now. ‘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 Conlon, 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 before he joined Reading.
‘It was challenging but, at the same time, I think it’s helped shape who he is today,’ says Conlon. ‘Since making his way into first-team football, it’s been a really maturing experience for him. He’s always been a very polite boy. And he is very humble.
‘I think he’s found the balance now, of carrying that ability and that confidence while also understanding that you still have to work hard and be dedicated to your training and your profession. He’s got that balance perfect now, and that’s why we’re seeing the player that we are witnessing now every week for Crystal Palace.’
After leaving Chelsea at 14, Olise soon joined Reading where his professional career soared
It has not always been that way. The talent, yes, but what needs to go with it. Mark Bowen arrived at Reading in March 2019 as technical director before going on to take charge of the first-team. He, like all the others, saw Olise’s talent.
‘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,’ Bowen tells The Mail on Sunday.
‘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. He had this robustness about him.’
Olise has the chance to fire Crystal Palace into the semi-finals of the FA Cup on Sunday
All that skill and confidence did not, immediately, translate into first-team minutes and match-winning performances. Bowen admits Olise was often disappointed at remaining in the Under 23s. He had issues with time-keeping. He’d get frustrated at training sessions that did not involve a ball at his feet. Bowen can smile about it now.
‘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?” Michael would have this thing in training when if any session was just going through passing drills or things that really engage him he would want to know why.
‘He’d ask “Can’t we just go and play a game?” He didn’t really get the fact that we were doing things that all players have got to do to improve. He wanted to do what he enjoyed. If we had a meeting, Michael would be the last one in the room. Those are the little traits that I imagine Patrick Vieira and senior players at Premier League level would not put up with that so much.’
Mark Bowen helped Olise become more balanced in his approach to football while at Reading
At the end of the 2019-20 season, Bowen and Olise held a frank conversation. Olise played 19 Championship games that season under Bowen with just a single assist to show for it. 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.
By the end of the 2020-21 season, Olise had seven goals and 12 assists. He was the EFL Young Player of the Season. He earned an £8m move to Palace. And now, after a frustrating early injury, he’s showing what he can do on the biggest stage.
‘He is playing well, he is enjoying his football and he is a really important player for the team,’ said Vieira this month.
‘That’s why I think there’s so much more for him to give,’ says Bowen. ‘It seems that, year upon year, he’s maturing. He’s grasping that you need more strings to your bow than just being a talented youngster. You need that discipline in your life and your game. Looking on, it seems in the last year he has gone to another notch.
‘Someone asked me a while ago “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 himself on again? I think he is.’