Olise named Bundesliga’s Player of the Season

Olise named Bundesliga’s Player of the Season

You only need a fraction of a second to recognise Michael Olise’s footballing class. He gathers the ball, starts to dribble, a stepover, a pass, a shot. The 24-year-old has once again brought world-class quality to Bayern’s wings since his 2024 move from Crystal Palace. He embodies footballing elegance, pace, mastery of the ball and a fiendish finish with his wand of a left foot. He’s good. Very good. And that has now been recognised with the France international voted the Bundesliga’s Player of the Season for 2025/26 after the final game of the season against Köln.

We’ve got to see all that in 2025/26 with delightful regularity. No player has provided more assists in the Bundesliga and only Harry Kane was involved in more.

Olise has managed to take his reliability to yet another level. While some players may grab a hat-trick and then go weeks without scoring or having an impact, our right winger has displayed remarkable consistency in his impact in the final third in terms of goals, assists and all-round threat to opposition defences.

Few players across Europe’s top five leagues have had as many touches of the ball in the final third as Olise. He doesn’t make many mistakes. His first touch is almost unrivalled, just as his ability to pierce a defence. “As soon as he touches the ball, opposition defenders are in a spin,” Roy Makaay once described.

An extraordinary player and person

Olise no longer takes a back seat to others in the public eye. Instead, through his laid-back demeanour and the occasional fashion surprise, he has since carved out a brand all of his own. Young people in particular love him off the pitch for simply being different from what society expects of someone who is so much in the spotlight.