Makelele's Bold Call: Michael Olise for Real Madrid
Claude Makelele has never been one for grandstanding. When he speaks, it tends to be measured, precise and rooted in what happens on the pitch. So when the former Real Madrid and Chelsea midfielder singles out one player as the man he would spend all of Madrid’s money on, people listen.
For Makelele, that player is Michael Olise.
The Frenchman revealed he has already taken that message straight to the top at the Bernabeu, telling president Florentino Perez exactly where he believes Madrid’s next big investment should go.
“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 his cards firmly on the table.
This isn’t routine praise. Makelele framed Olise as a throwback and a glimpse of football’s future all at once – a winger who restores a certain feeling, a certain innocence, to the game.
“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 hits hardest. In an era of systems, structures and data, Makelele is talking about something you can’t quite measure: the void a player leaves when he’s missing. The sense that the game is flatter, more predictable, stripped of its mischief.
To underline the point, he reached for the highest of benchmarks. Lionel Messi.
“When he's on form, you sense that, at any moment, like Messi, he can do something unexpected,” Makelele said. It’s not a lazy comparison. It’s about that tension in the stadium when the ball finds a certain kind of left foot and everyone leans forward.
He pointed to how other elite attackers respond to Olise’s presence, name-checking Ousmane Dembele, Kylian Mbappe and Bradley Barcola as players who understand the unique threat he poses.
“Look at Dembele, Mbappe, 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.”
For Makelele, Olise represents the version of the sport that still makes people gasp, the one that survives beneath the layers of pressing schemes and tactical diagrams. Vision, disguise, the audacity to see a pass that isn’t really there until he decides it is.
Inevitably, any player linked with Real Madrid in this era gets dragged into a comparison with Jude Bellingham. One is a creator and wide playmaker, the other a goal-scoring force from midfield who has already bent games and entire Champions League nights to his will.
Makelele wants no part of that debate.
“Jude Bellingham or Michael Olise? Let them speak for themselves. What they're doing is exceptional. I don't make comparisons,” he said.
Then he zoomed out, away from the modern obsession with ranking and ordering, to a broader philosophy shaped by the legends he played with and against.
“That's my philosophy: you never compare the greats. You can't compare Pele with the generations that followed him, and with Maradona, the comparisons never end.
“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.”
In other words: stop trying to force Olise into someone else’s mould. Stop trying to measure Bellingham against ghosts. Let the careers breathe.
Makelele has seen enough eras to know how this works. Some players define systems; others break them. If Real Madrid follow his advice, they may soon find out which category Michael Olise belongs in – and how much of that childhood magic he can bring to the Bernabeu stage.
