On May 5th, local time, in an interview with The Athletic, several youth training coaches talked about the growth of Bayern Munich star Olise. After joining Reading's youth training, the coaches gave him full freedom, protected his creativity, and guided him to improve his game efficiency, allowing him to gradually mature. Olise is quiet but extremely confident, with a strong desire to win and a perfectionist mentality, which has become an important reason for his continuous progress.
Part 1
The following is the second part of the interview
After leaving Chelsea's youth training, Olise joined Manchester City's youth training and attended St. Bede's School, an independent school that provides education for Manchester City's youth training players.
However, he found this transition difficult, especially living away from home. Since then, Manchester City has invested more effort in finding a more relaxed school environment for some children who are not suitable for the private school system.
After being abandoned by Manchester City as well, Olise returned to London and began to weigh his next steps.
He participated in some games of youth training coach Sean Conlon's "We Cultivate Footballers" project. At that time, several former youth training players from Brentford also participated - these players needed new places to go after the club closed its youth training camp in May 2016.
"It was all very beneficial for him," Conlon said. "It was because of the journey he had experienced, and the difficulties and struggles in it, that made him more humble in a very positive way."
That summer, Olise was introduced to Brendan Flanagan, the head of youth training recruitment at Reading, through Darren Richards, a scout who had worked for Tottenham Hotspur. In August 2016, he came to Reading from a commuter town in the western suburbs of London, first joining as a trialist and then officially signing.
Flanagan told The Athletic: "The coaches called him together and asked him very frankly: 'What happened at Chelsea? What happened at Manchester City?' He explained, and then they said to him, 'You can start over here. Within that line, everything is fine; once you cross the line, we will be strict with you.' We never really encountered any problems. We just let Olise be himself and let him do what he does best with football. We never tried to deprive him of his creativity."
Flanagan remembers that Olise was introverted but full of confidence in his football ability.
He recalled a match against Sparta Prague in an international cup youth event, when Olise was still a second-year student. Flanagan was sitting next to former West Ham United midfielder Hayden Mullins, who had become a coach and had just moved from Reading to Watford.
"He turned to me and said, 'Who the hell is this guy?' I laughed at the time. Olise is... different, he's unique. Hayden said, 'Come on, Brendan, tell me, where did you find this guy?'"
In March 2019, 17-year-old Olise made his first-team debut, coming on as a substitute in the 69th minute of the team's 0-3 home defeat to Leeds United.
That summer, Reading played a pre-season friendly against Chelsea, with the two teams using completely different lineups in the first and second halves. Olise played for Reading in the second half and performed impressively. He assisted Sam Baldock to score the third goal with a well-weighted pass. This also made Chelsea realize again what kind of player they had let go.
Mark Bowen recalled that he first noticed Olise while serving as Reading's sporting director. In October 2019, he replaced José Gomes as the team's head coach.
He remembers that on the training ground, Olise would always get up quickly after facing tough challenges from senior players, dust himself off and continue training.
"Nothing seemed to affect him," he told The Athletic. "He just kept playing, and you could see he had speed and ability."
Former Wales player Chris Gunter, who was his teammate at Reading at the time, said that it was almost immediately obvious that he was a talented player. "His awareness is excellent, knowing where the space is, where the pressure is coming from, and which direction to turn," Gunter said.
Bowen explained that Olise's talent was obvious, but the main challenge was to get him to produce more practical results in the game. In the breakthrough year of the 2019-20 season, he made 19 league appearances (13 starts), without a goal and only 1 assist.
"You would see him do some moves in training, really just shoulder-shaking, cutting inside, getting past three people, and then blasting the ball into the top corner," Bowen said. "Everyone would be amazed, and the senior players would applaud him. And the key was to make him realize: 'Michael, why not bring these to the game? Don't stay in your comfort zone in the game. You can totally do these things in Saturday's game, not just in training.' Eventually, he got the hang of it."
Bowen also said that although Olise had outstanding individual ability, he would also work hard for the team. He recalled that in Reading's game against Derby County, he had arranged for Olise to mark Manchester United star Rooney, and he completed the task completely according to tactical requirements.
Bowen described him as quiet, but with a firm belief in his own abilities: "If you don't look at him and understand him in the right way, sometimes he might give you a slightly arrogant feeling, making you think, 'Who is this kid?' But that's not what I call arrogance, it's just his personality. He is very confident in what he can do."
In the following 2020-21 season, under coach Veljko Paunović, Olise truly ushered in an explosion - contributing 7 goals and 12 assists in the Championship, and was therefore elected the Championship Young Player of the Season.
With this excellent season, he then joined Crystal Palace for a transfer fee of £8 million (approximately $10.8 million), landing in the Premier League.
Since then, he has been singing all the way.
Conlon said that he had communicated with Olise after Olise scored a winning goal against Real Madrid.
"I sent him a picture of him when he was 7 years old, which my father took," Conlon said. "From the picture, you can see that his movements are exactly the same as now - dialing the ball to his left foot, landing with his right foot as a support foot, his arms fully extended, and then pushing the ball away from the defender. He already had this physical mechanism at the age of 7."
"When we talked, I said to him, 'You were born for this.' His response was very interesting. He said, 'Yeah, I haven't done it perfectly yet, but I will.' That was after the game against Real Madrid, when he was named the best player of the game and scored the winning goal, but he thought he was not perfect enough. That's his mentality, he's an extreme perfectionist."
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