There were 16 minutes remaining and Crystal Palace trailed Manchester City 4-1 at Selhurst Park.
Ordinarily, fans would have been considering early exits to beat the post-match rush. Instead, a wave of excitement was rippling around the stadium.
The reason could be found on the touchline where Michael Olise stood stripped and ready to come on. The winger had missed two months and seven games with a hamstring injury sustained in February, 11 minutes after entering the fray in a heavy defeat by rivals Brighton & Hove Albion.
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His return represented hope for Palace, and not just because the gap between them and the relegation zone was about to narrow to five points. Above all, it offered excitement in a season that has desperately lacked it.
Even in those 16 minutes, Olise showed what Palace had been missing. A delightful crossfield pass to Nathaniel Clyne had the crowd applauding, while he came close to scoring after a trademark cut inside and shot from the right wing. If Odsonne Edouard had not hesitated to shoot after being teed up by Olise, he would have also claimed an assist.
Palace are desperate for the 22-year-old to return to the starting XI against Liverpool on Sunday, but caution must be applied given he has missed 18 games this season through injury.
It may be that his injury issues this season — that problem at Brighton was an aggravation of a previous hamstring issue — affect the likelihood of a move away in the summer, although he will attract interest.
Manchester City had identified Olise as a possible replacement for Riyad Mahrez last summer but no formal approach was made, while Chelsea also came close to prising him away. They believed they had triggered his £35million ($44m at today’s rates) release clause and were offering a long-term contract. Instead, Olise signed a four-year deal at Selhurst Park in August. A reluctance to commit to such a long deal was one of the factors that saw him remain with Palace.
His new deal made him one of Palace’s highest earners and contains a new, higher release clause. There had been suggestions that Reading — the club Palace signed Olise from in 2021 after activating an £8m release clause — would be due a cut of any prospective deal. But Mark Bowen, who managed Olise for Reading in the 2019-20 season, said that was not the case.
“We don’t (have a sell-on clause),” he told the Elm Park Royals podcast in October 2022. “We had a buy-out clause in his contract and he’s gone there (Crystal Palace) now. Looking back… I would suggest the buy-out clause was way too low.”
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Regardless, Palace will still not bank the entirety of Olise’s next transfer fee, once payments to other parties are factored in.
There have been times during his Palace career when Olise was open to a move away but he has never actively sought a departure. He is ambitious and extremely self-confident, traits which are at odds with his shy and reserved nature in interviews. He has a complicated character but that should not be mistaken for being troublesome. He is well-liked and appreciated at Palace, but he is not afraid to stand up for himself.
Financial factors are not the main incentive for Olise in deciding his next step. Sporting achievement is more important. He believes he can become a Champions League player and his ambitions extend to international football, where he is targeting a place in the France senior setup.
Olise could have been part of France’s plans for this summer’s European Championship had he stayed injury-free and maintained his progress from last season. That chance has probably gone, but should he remain fit next season, a senior call-up is a possibility, regardless of where he is playing. He has seven under-21 France caps, and a significant strength of their senior success under Didier Deschamps has been the speed at which talented age group players are moved up.
France’s squad is full of attacking quality, but there is an abundance of forwards who are dribblers and box crashers. That is particularly true at right wing, with the two-footed Ousmane Dembele and Moussa Diaby, who is more of a No 10. If Deschamps wanted a more creative, passing winger, someone who could use an overlapping right-back, Olise would be ideal.
Although also eligible for England, any possibility of representing them is not on Olise’s mind: he is fully focused on France. There is also a possibility that playing for France will open up more of the world for him when he leaves Palace. Alongside Manchester City, Paris Saint-Germain would be the calibre of club for whom he would like to play one day.
A move to PSG is not as unlikely as it once was. The philosophy under head coach Luis Enrique is on implementing a Barcelona-style possession and high-pressing game and there has been a focus on young, particularly French talent in squad building. Olise ticks those boxes.
Kylian Mbappe’s impending departure, almost certainly to Real Madrid, means they will need to reconfigure their front line. Dembele is the starting right winger in a 4-3-3, usually supported by the advancing right-back Achraf Hakimi. Dembele is a dribbler but often lacks end product — Olise would fit their transfer template, but offer a different profile as a player.
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Olise idolises some of the elite players who have established their reputations in the Premier League, sharing their determination and relentless desire to be the best. He has admired the way they have charted out their careers, and has learned from their devotion and commitment to their careers. With that in mind, he took himself off to Miami where he worked on his recovery from the hamstring tear sustained during the European Under-21 Championship last summer.
Given his lack of football, the last seven games of the Premier League season are significant for Olise – not just in helping Palace stay away from trouble, but also in convincing prospective suitors that he is worth the risk, despite his injury struggles. Even with the caveats that this summer may see more caution due to the strict implementation of the Premier League’s profitability and sustainability rules, regular observers will surely conclude that he is worth it.
Last season, Olise registered 11 assists — the joint-fourth highest total in the division and the first Palace player to record more than nine in one season — and also won Palace’s player of the year award.
Even in his limited role this season, his output has been impressive.
There has been a goal every 128 minutes, the eighth-best rate of any player with at least 700 minutes this season. The only wingers who can rival that are Cole Palmer (with a goal every 125 minutes, the only player younger to score more frequently) and Mohamed Salah (one every 121 minutes). Both are first-choice penalty takers.
His game has developed this term. He has become physically stronger, but his mentality also appears to have evolved. He is showing more of a selfish streak, shooting far more frequently: he has delivered six goals from just 772 minutes across 12 games (eight starts) as well as three assists.
That form was a continuation of how he ended last term. Before Palace’s trip to Leeds in April, Olise had provided only one goal involvement in 10 league games (an assist against Brentford); at Elland Road, he became the youngest Premier League player to claim three assists from open play in one match as Palace won 5-1, and then followed it up with three assists in eight starts in the following games.
He ended the season with the most Premier League assists by a Palace player in a single campaign, further evidence of his ability and high ceiling, but from a development standpoint, the regularity of his goal involvements this season shows he has significantly improved.
Olise scored or assisted in four consecutive games over 14 days in December, playing every minute — and those games were against a high calibre of opponent, including Manchester City, Brighton and Chelsea. In total, in two months after starting his first match of the season in the defeat by Luton Town in November, Olise scored more goals (six) than in his previous 64 appearances for Palace.
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That improved consistency shows when looking at the success rates of Olise’s crosses and dribbles. He is completing eight per cent more crosses now than in the 2021-22 season, while his dribble success has risen from 40.6 per cent to 51.9 per cent in the same period. That take-on success is among the top five per cent of Premier League attacking midfielders and wingers this season, having ranked in the bottom 30 per cent in 2021-22.
Since the start of 2021-22, in minutes when Olise is on the pitch, he accounts for 43.9 per cent of Palace’s ‘big chances’ created (as defined by Opta), a third of their expected assists (xA), almost 40 per cent of actual assists and nearly 45 per cent of Palace’s crosses. For all three, he ranks in the top three players in their league at their respective teams (accounting for the highest amount).
It demonstrates how disproportionately good Olise is — a top player in a mid-level team. Few players in the league carry an attack as well as he does.
There has been no great revolution in Olise’s game. He has simply become more efficient, more effective and, even in limited appearances, more crucial to Palace. Even in a short period during the defeat by City, he made a difference. His positivity and ability to take a player on by the way he manipulates the ball are standout qualities, and would serve him well at an elite club, where players are expected to look after possession, an area in which he has improved markedly over the past three years.
Two questions remain. The first, in the short-term, is how he will suit Oliver Glasner’s system as one of two players behind the striker, and whether he will be inhibited by his injuries. Physically it may have affected him, but his focus and determination will mean there is no psychological issue.
The second is where he will be playing next season, with his future currently up in the air. Either way, the chances of Olise emulating Palace’s last great wing talent – Wilfried Zaha – and staying in south London for the best part of a decade are almost non-existent.
Olise is a talent destined for the top; Palace will simply hope that these next seven games are not his farewell tour.
(Top photo: Sebastian Frej/MB Media/Getty Images)