At Bayern Munich, What Michael Olise Says Goes

It’s hard to know whether or not Bayern Munich is particularly good this season. On one hand, they have the best stats in Europe. Die Roten score more domestic goals than anyone in the Old Continent’s top-five leagues, and allow among the fewest. Even in the Champions League, where their underwhelming results consigned them to the funky but fun new format’s purgatory round, the Germans could point to their competition-best expected goal difference as evidence that their performances have been better than the scoreboards might indicate. And just in terms of pure talent, Bayern doesn’t have to look at any other team’s roster with envy. By all accounts, this should be one of the best teams in the world.

On the other hand, Bayern’s cumulative showings across the season give off a strong whiff of a flat-track bully. Though they consistently hammer their lessers, Bayern’s record against more or less equals isn’t very good: four draws and no wins against Bayer Leverkusen (twice), Eintracht Frankfurt, and Borussia Dortmund in league play, a loss to Leverkusen that bounced them from the German Cup, and three Champions League defeats to Aston Villa, Barcelona, and Feyenoord by a combined score of 8-1. A 1-0 win over almost-didn’t-even-make-it-to-purgatory Paris Saint-Germain and a 5-1 Bundesliga win over FC Lawn Ball Sports are the closest Bayern has come to statement victories this season.

For those reasons, it could only be but so surprising that Bayern struggled in its ultimately successful bid to get past Celtic in its UCL purgatory tie, the conclusion of which came on Tuesday. The common denominator in most of Bayern’s bad outings has been its defense, and the two matches against Celtic, which ended in a 3-2 aggregate Bayern victory, were no different. This wasn’t the common case of an underdog nicking a fluke goal or two and holding on for dear life. Celtic constantly challenged Bayern’s exposed and error-prone defense, creating six big chances across the two matches. With just a little more attacking efficiency, the Bhoys could’ve easily sent FC Hollywood to hell. If manager Vincent Kompany is to get his team as far in this tournament as the club expects, he’s going to have to figure out how to offer center backs Dayot Upamecano and Kim Min-jae more cover, and also how to get those same center backs to not give the ball away at the worst possible moments.

But while there’s good reason to question the overall quality of Bayern Munich as a unit, there is no denying that its attacking corps is absolutely lethal. The usual suspects have been as good as we’re used to. Harry Kane is still scoring all the time; Jamal Musiala, the world’s first fully rubberized human, is at 21 years old already one of the very best attacking midfielders in the world; the combination of Leroy Sané, Kingsley Coman, Serge Gnabry, and Thomas Müller still makes for the most stunning array of reserve/rotation forwards this side of 2016 Real Madrid. What is maybe more surprising, at least for people who didn’t fully appreciate what was already becoming clear during his time at Crystal Palace, is that summer addition Michael Olise has arguably been the best Bayern attacker of the lot.

In an interview right after Bayern’s narrow escape of Celtic, a successful outcome he above all his teammates deserves the most credit for, CBS Sports’ Micah Richards asked Olise about his transition from the Premier League’s lower mid-table to the top of the Bundesliga and into the UCL. “It was a big jump,” he said. “It definitely took some time to adapt to, to be honest.” I take him at his word—it’s not hard to imagine the difficulties facing a 22-year-old leaving his native England for the first time and moving to Bavaria—though you’d struggle to find much evidence of any growing pains on the pitch. Even with the depth of Bayern’s attack, Olise instantly settled into a starting and starring role. True, he did “fail” to get on the scoresheet of the first two Bundesliga matches of the season. But following the subsequent September international break, during which time he made his overdue debut with the senior France national team, Olise went back to Munich and, in the span of a week, rattled off five goals and two assists across three games. When talking about a talent of the magnitude of Olise’s, it’s important to understand something like an “adaptation period” in relative terms.

Regardless of whether a goalless couple of weeks to start a season qualifies as an adaption period, Olise quickly did make the jump, and he hasn’t stopped clearing the hurdles since. His 11 goals and eight assists in Bundesliga and Champions League play put him second on Bayern’s goal contributions list, behind only Kane’s typically outrageous 35 goals and assists (which, it’s worth pointing out, includes 12 penalties). The creative passing, the tempo control, the elusive dribbling, the pinpoint ball-striking, the defensive workrate, and everything else that made him such a force at Crystal Palace has, as expected, been translated seamlessly into German. He’s also thus far avoided the unlucky injuries that stood as probably the only real concern about his fit at the game’s highest level, which also isn’t too much of a surprise when you account for how most of those spells on the sideline originated from one-off blows or over-exertions rather than anything more structural. It’s funny to say this about £60 million, but it always felt like that release clause was an absolute steal for a player of Olise’s caliber. Even just two-thirds into his first season with Bayern, Olise is already proving he was more than worth it.

If Bayern as a whole has underwhelmed in big games this year, you can’t say the same about Olise himself. The Celtic tie was a good example. It was Olise who always looked the most likely one to score or create a goal throughout the 180 minutes. It was Olise who provided the much-needed relief in the first leg, finally cracking Celtic’s steely defense with a trademark worldie to give Bayern the lead on the cusp of halftime. It was Olise who kept driving Bayern forward in the second leg as the favorites sought first the opening goal to put the tie to bed and then, after Celtic scored first in the 63rd minute and leveled the aggregate scoreline, the goal that reestablish their lead. It was Olise who played the brilliant cross, fierce and low and hooking like his world-class crosses tend to be, that created the situation from which Alphonso Davies bungled home the winning goal mere seconds before the match went into extra time. Even more tellingly, across the two legs it was Olise to whom the mighty Bayern Munich always looked to make the difference, his teammates constantly feeding their new leader the ball, knowing that through his feet lays the path to glory.

It may not be clear just how good Bayern is, though the squad is plenty good enough to have the Bundesliga pretty much wrapped up already, sitting pretty atop the table with an eight-point lead over Leverkusen, the reigning champions. The demands will be much tougher in the UCL, where Bayern will next face either Atlético Madrid or a Leverkusen side that, league lead be damned, Bayern has thus far failed to beat on three separate occasions this season. But what is clear is that Bayern possesses the raw materials for a scandalously good team, one that should this season and beyond expect to compete until the very end for every trophy. Likewise, it’s clear that Olise belongs at the forefront of this easily imagined studly Bayern, and the task for his coaches, his teammates, and he himself is to help get everyone else on his level.