Michael Olise has quietly rewritten a piece of French football history that had stood untouched since 1958, built assist by assist across a single, remarkable calendar year.
His year in French colors began well before the World Cup. In March 2026, in the second leg of a Nations League quarter-final against Croatia, Olise both scored and assisted as France won 2-0 to progress on aggregate, an early signal of the form he was about to carry into the biggest tournament of his career.
That form followed him to the World Cup itself. In France’s opener against Senegal, Olise didn’t find the scoresheet himself but was named Man of the Match, setting up one of Kylian Mbappé’s goals in a 3-1 win. Across France’s three group matches, against Senegal and their two other group opponents, Olise racked up three assists in total, setting the tone for what was to come.
The Round of 32 against Sweden turned into his signature performance of the group phase. Olise set up two goals in a 3-0 win, taking his tournament tally to five assists and putting him outright top of the World Cup’s assist charts with still four games potentially left to play.
His tally held at five through the Round of 16, the quarter-final, and a semi-final defeat to Spain, before he delivered again on the biggest stage available to him. In the third-place match against England, Olise assisted both of Mbappé’s goals, taking his World Cup tally to seven assists in total and breaking a record held by Pelé since 1970, when the Brazilian legend managed six assists across Brazil’s title-winning campaign.
That brought his 2026 tally to eight assists for France before a ball had even been kicked in the new season. The ninth arrived on September 25, in Zinédine Zidane’s first match in charge of France following Didier Deschamps’ departure. Olise set up Mbappé for the only goal in a 1-0 win over Türkiye in the Nations League, taking his calendar-year tally to nine assists in total.
That figure matches a record that had stood since 1958, when Raymond Kopa, one of French football’s most celebrated names and a Ballon d’Or winner in his own right, also reached nine assists for France in a single year. Olise is only the second player in the nation’s history to do it.
The thing is, Olise still 5 more matches left to play before the year is out. Nine assists ties him with Kopa for now, but he’s just as likely to be the one to break the record outright before 2026 comes to a close.
