Michael Olise: The Future of Football According to Claude Makelele
Claude Makelele has seen enough of the game’s great artists to know when another one is emerging. And for him, Michael Olise sits right at the heart of modern football’s imagination.
The former Chelsea and Real Madrid midfielder revealed he has already gone straight to the top at the Bernabeu to make his case.
“Michael Olise to Real Madrid? I would support it. I had the opportunity to speak with President Florentino Perez and I told him that if there's money to spend on just one player, it's him,” Makelele said, laying out his stance with the same clarity he once used to patrol midfield.
For Makelele, Olise is not just another talented winger. He is a throwback and a glimpse of the future at the same time.
Olise, he argued, restores something football has started to lose: that raw sense of wonder.
“Olise brings back the feeling of watching football, the taste of what we experienced as children: talent, freedom, quality, effectiveness. When he's not on the pitch, his absence is noticeable.”
That last line matters. In a sport obsessed with data and structure, Makelele is talking about aura. Presence. The way a stadium feels different when a certain player steps onto the grass.
And when Makelele reaches for a comparison, he goes straight to the very top.
He likened Olise’s ability to transform a game to that of Lionel Messi, not in terms of legacy, but in terms of that constant threat, that sense that something outrageous is always just one touch away.
“When he's on form, you sense that, at any moment, like Messi, he can do something unexpected,” Makelele said. “Look at Ousmane Dembele, Kylian Mbappe, Bradley Barcola: they know he's capable of placing the ball in a space that other players don't even see. That's the modern football we love, the football that makes fans dream. Even the commentators are amazed by his technique. He's exceptional.”
The praise is specific. It is not about goals or assists, but about vision and imagination — the passes others do not see, the angles others do not attempt. For Makelele, that is the essence of today’s elite attacking play: not just execution, but invention.
Yet as soon as the conversation edges towards comparison, especially with another of the game’s brightest young stars, Jude Bellingham, Makelele draws a firm line.
He refuses to turn two rising careers into a debate.
“Jude Bellingham or Michael Olise? Let them speak for themselves. What they're doing is exceptional. I don't make comparisons,” he insisted. “That's my philosophy: you never compare the greats. You can't compare Pele with the generations that followed him, and with Diego Maradona, the comparisons never end.”
From there, he widened the lens. Names like Pele, Maradona and Zinedine Zidane are not used lightly by someone who shared a pitch and a dressing room with legends. Makelele’s point is that true greatness stands alone.
“Zinedine Zidane left his mark on world football and it will last forever, regardless of the generations that follow him. Let each of these young players build their careers in their own way and write their own name in the history of this sport.”
So the message is clear. In Makelele’s eyes, Olise is not a supporting act or a tactical piece to be shuffled around a board. He is a potential leading man, worthy of Real Madrid conversation, worthy of being judged on his own terms.
The question now is simple: which club will give him the stage big enough to match the vision Makelele so clearly sees?
