The fee Bayern paid for Michael Olise was never the mystery. The release clause set the number. What Max Eberl was not sure of, he has now admitted, was the ceiling.
“Honestly, we knew we were signing a very good left-footed winger who fits the Bayern mould. But the fact that he would turn out to be this exceptional…” Eberl told the club’s in-house magazine Säbener 51, in comments relayed by Yahoo Sports.
The transfer fee was predictable, Eberl said, precisely because of the clause. What Bayern could not price was the rest.
A trusted call to Glasner
Bayern’s confidence, according to Eberl, came down to one working relationship. Sporting director Christoph Freund, recently extended until 2029, knows Oliver Glasner well. Glasner was Olise’s manager at Crystal Palace when Bayern moved for him.
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When Freund asked, Glasner did not sell. He warned.
“When a coach says, ‘Of course, take him, take him,’ you start to wonder. But Glasner said, ‘He still has a lot to learn, and we need him.’ That told us how highly he valued Michael,” Eberl told Säbener 51, as relayed by Yahoo Sports.
Bayern activated Olise’s release clause, reported at close to €60m, in the summer of 2024, with a 15 per cent sell-on retained by the London club, as reporting at the time confirmed.
Player of the season, then more
Olise closed his first season in Munich as the 2025/26 Bundesliga Player of the Season with 15 goals and 19 assists, becoming only the second player since 2004/05, and the first since Jadon Sancho, to hit at least 15 goals and 15 assists in a single Bundesliga campaign. Bayern reached the Champions League semi-finals, where they were edged out 6-5 on aggregate by Paris Saint-Germain.
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He has carried on. Early in 2026/27, Olise sat joint-top of the Bundesliga’s scoring chart with four goals, headlined by a hat-trick in a 7-0 rout of Union Berlin on matchday four. Bundesliga.com calls him “the whole package”, borrowing head coach Vincent Kompany’s own phrase.
Kompany has reached for a bigger comparison too. After a Champions League display earlier in 2026, the Bayern boss told Bundesliga.com that Olise’s attention to detail reminded him of Kevin De Bruyne’s at Manchester City, and that the winger “can become one of the best attacking players ever.”
Olise is 24. He is Bayern’s reigning player of the season and was the Bundesliga’s leading assist provider last term with 19. Bayern’s next league match is at home to Freiburg after the November international break.
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