The brilliant Michael Olise represents a key faultline in history of French football | Jonathan Wilson

M ichael Olisé is probably the best creative player in the world at the moment. He racked up 26 assists for Bayern Munich last season. It was his shift into a more central role that transformed France’s game against Senegal from drab slog to impressive victory. The confidence he always had at Crystal Place has evolved at Bayern into a graceful fluency. In a hugely talented France side, Olise is the standout, the player who it feels might carry them to the World Cup . Yet he is something of an anomaly. It’s not just that he was born in White City, west London, and grew up loving cricket (his father was British-Nigerian and his mother French-Algerian), or even that, like his former Palace teammate Eberechi Eze, he spends much of his spare time playing chess. It’s that, unusually in this France side, he plays with a sense of freedom and joy. He has not yet submitted fully to Didier Deschamps’s tactical yoke, nor been curdled by his own celebrity. As such, Olise represents a key faultline in history of French football. At the 1982 World Cup, France were renowned for their carré magique , the magic square of Michel Platini, Jean Tigana, Alain Giresse and Bernard Genghini. They actually played as a midfield four only in the semi-final defeat by West Germany but Seville became a myth, an idea. …