Earlier this month, following Kylian Mbappé’s shock departure from Nike to On, we pondered who might step up to fill the French superstar’s Mercurial boots.
Erling Haaland and new signee Désiré Doué were among the obvious candidates, but we also floated a slightly more left-field proposition in the shape of Michael Olise – albeit with the caveat that the Bayern Munich winger’s fiercely independent streak and longstanding reluctance to entertain sponsorship deals hardly made him a straightforward signing.
Well, overnight, the picture became a little clearer. According to a , Nike have reached an agreement with the 24-year-old French international, potentially positioning him as the heir to Mbappé’s throne at Nike Football.
Olise represents a rather different profile from his gleaming, media-trained-out-of-his-eyeballs compatriot. The ultimate anti-content content machine, he's routinely gone viral for his curious and crushingly impassive handling of the media. In the process, he's weaponised the introvert persona, parlaying a wry energy into a singular form of rizz. The antithesis of your conventional brand ambassador.
His relationship with football boots is similarly idiosyncratic. If you're slightly confused, given that Olise has been wearing Nike boots for years, that's understandable. The crucial detail is that, until now, he's operated without a boot sponsorship deal. In fact, the Bayern talisman has spent years turning down lucrative offers, largely so he can continue wearing his beloved Nike Hypervenom Phantom III – a model the Swoosh discontinued way back in 2018.
Olise – a bona fide football boot lover – has gone as far as sourcing old stock from Instagram resellers, often having the boots customised to match his Bayern or France kits. At the World Cup, he even enlisted Matty Boy, a former Chrome Hearts creative director, to overhaul a pair with doodle drawings.
And his love of old boots isn't exclusive to Nike. , he turned up at Bayern training wearing a pair of adidas F50.8 Tunit boots from 2008 – 17 (!) years old at the time, which might as well be another geological era as far as football boot technology goes.
But here's where things get particularly interesting. Nike are reportedly plotting a full-scale revival of the Hypervenom in 2027, potentially with Olise as the face of the relaunched range. The original Hypervenom was famously championed by Neymar, who just so happens to be one of Olise's childhood idols.
The move could also inject a fresh dose of personality into Nike Football as they continue to battle with the Three Stripes, whose football campaigns are enjoying a wave of momentum fuelled by Lionel Messi's legendary career entering its final chapter, the emergence of Barcelona phenomenon Lamine Yamal and cameos from Hollywood heavyweights like Timothée Chalamet.
On paper, a reserved character with zero interest in playing the media game is hardly the safest bet for a global sportswear giant. But perhaps that's precisely what Nike need. After all, this is a brand that built much of its footballing reputation on irreverence and provocation. Olise isn't exactly a rabble-rouser in, say, the Eric Cantona mould, but there's something endearingly rebellious about his refusal to adhere to the typical celebrity athlete archetype. He also provides a fascinating contrast to Nike's other leading man, Haaland – an objectively silly, Snapchat-loving extrovert still basking in being dubbed the World Cup's most viral player.
At a time when so much of football feels polished to within an inch of its life, unpredictability is becoming the ultimate selling point.