Why Michael Olise chose to play for France over England
Michael Olise has been one of the stars of the World Cup after choosing to play for France ahead of four other nations including England.
Olise was born in White City, London, to France to a Nigerian-British father and a French-Algerian mother.
The 24-year-old grew up in west London and spent time at Arsenal, Chelsea and Manchester City’s academies before eventually making his professional debut in 2019.
At international level, Olise had plenty of options as he was eligible to represent England, France, Nigeria, Algeria and Haiti.
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But the Bayern Munich midfielder was intent on playing for France as he made his Under-18 debut in 2019 before Didier Deschamps handed him his first senior cap five years later.
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In an interview with Highsnobiety, Olise explained the decision to play for France ahead of his summer’s World Cup.
‘The players I followed when I was young were French: Zidane, Thierry Henry, Ribery,’ he said.
‘And I always came to France when I was young. It felt more natural.’
Meanwhile, former Arsenal captain and France’s 1998 World Cup winner, Patrick Vieira, claims Olise picked Les Bleus ahead of England because he felt he had a better chance of winning the World Cup.
‘There was no question of England or anything else,’ Vieira, who managed Olise at Crystal Palace, told L’Equipe.
‘He told me he had always been a supporter of the French national team.
‘And he also explained to me that he had a better chance of becoming a world champion with Les Bleus than with England.’
Speaking after France’s win over Sweden in the last-16, Thierry Henry claimed that Olise should be regarded as France’s most-important player ahead of Kylian Mbappe.
‘What he does off the ball is second to none,’ Henry told Fox Sports.
‘Because people always stay on what a guy does on the ball, usually, when you’re that kind of guy, technical, you forget about your defensive duty. He doesn’t, he thinks about the game, the way he goes about the game, Michael is a freak.
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‘The way he sees stuff is just not the same as others can see stuff. If things don’t happen the way he likes to happen, sometimes he drifts a bit out of the game because he sees everything so perfectly and so quickly that if you’re not on his wave sometimes he gets annoyed.
‘But what a player, I had the privilege to coach him. Sometimes he was doing stuff in training and you have to hold yourself from going, ‘wow’, because as a coach you just can’t do that, you talk to your assistant, ‘did you see what he just did?’. And then you say, ‘come back, come back, come back, let’s go guys’.
‘This guy is on another planet, he is just different.
‘MVP will always be Kylian, because he will put numbers no one can do, but the most important player is Michael Olise.’
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Article source: https://metro.co.uk/2026/07/04/michael-olise-chose-play-france-england-29043617/