In the 88th minute of the second leg of the Champions League quarterfinal between Bayern Munich and Real Madrid earlier this year, Luis Díaz scored a blinder. His teammates ran to celebrate. Or most of them did. Michael Olise instead rushed to collect the ball from the back of the net. Strategically, this made no sense: Bayern was now up 5-4 on aggregate, and all they had to do to secure their spot in the semifinals was see out the few remaining minutes of the game. But Olise is not given to pragmatism.

His impatience was rewarded in the final minute of stoppage time when Harry Kane spotted him skulking in a large empty space. Olise received the ball languidly, almost as if time had stopped, then danced down the field with it seemingly attached to his left foot. Just before he entered the box, he stepped off his right foot to unbalance the lonely defender and curled the ball into the goal. This time, he raced to the crowd. Now he was done.

In a post-match interview, a bemused but delighted Thierry Henry (who had tried to coach this incautious behavior out of Olise at the 2024 Olympics) asked him, “What went through your head?” Olise is so famously withholding in interviews that he has earned the nickname Mr. Nonchalant. Some people think that his affectless monosyllables are evidence that he is painfully shy; I like to think he is just disdainful of the circus. (Unlike his teammates who grinningly peddle everything from watches to hotels to chocolate, Olise has no major endorsements.) He rewarded his old coach with a rare smile and the truth: “I wanted to score.” Fair enough.

At the 2026 World Cup, the superstars have lit up the field — Lionel Messi, Kylian Mbappé, Erling Haaland, and Kane are locked in battle for the Golden Boot — but there is a growing consensus that Olise is the most in-form footballer in the world.

Born in West London to a Nigerian father and a French Algerian mother, Olise could have played for any of four countries. When asked why he opted for France, he said, “The players I followed when I was young were Zidane, Henry, Ribéry.” He is Marine Le Pen’s nightmare incarnate: the child of African immigrants whose........

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