Claude Makelele Champions Michael Olise as Real Madrid's Top Target

Claude Makelele has seen enough of the game’s greats to choose his words carefully. So when he singles out Michael Olise as the one player Real Madrid should spend big on, it lands with real weight.

The former Chelsea and Real Madrid midfielder revealed he has already taken his admiration straight to the top at the Bernabeu, telling president Florentino Perez that Olise should be the club’s priority signing.

“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 out his stance without hesitation.

For Makelele, Olise is not just another talented winger. He represents something more nostalgic, almost romantic, about the sport. The Frenchman highlighted the Crystal Palace star’s creativity and game-changing spark, the kind of qualities that pull fans to the edge of their seats and keep defenders guessing.

Olise, he argued, restores that childlike thrill that first drew so many to football.

“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 is telling. In a modern game packed with structure, systems and data, Makelele is drawn to a player whose impact is felt instinctively. You know when he is there. You feel when he is not.

At his best, Makelele believes, Olise operates in the rare air usually reserved for the sport’s biggest artists. He even put the French-born winger’s influence on games in the same breath as Lionel Messi, not in terms of legacy, but in that sense of constant danger.

“When he's on form, you sense that, at any moment, like Messi, he can do something unexpected,” he said.

Defenders are not the only ones on alert. Makelele pointed to the awareness of Olise’s own teammates – players of serious pedigree in their own right – who understand what he can unlock.

“Look at [Ousmane] Dembele, [Kylian] Mbappe, [Bradley] 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.”

In a few lines, Makelele captured why Europe’s elite keep circling around Olise: vision, imagination, execution. The ability to see and deliver passes others do not even consider. The sense that something unusual is always just one touch away.

Yet as the hype builds, so does the temptation to throw Olise into every debate and ranking. Makelele wants no part of that. When the conversation turned to Jude Bellingham, he shut down the idea of pitting one young star against another.

“Jude Bellingham or Michael Olise? Let them speak for themselves. What they're doing is exceptional. I don't make comparisons,” he said.

That stance comes from a wider philosophy, one shaped by sharing dressing rooms with some of the greatest to play the game. Makelele has watched how endless comparisons can distort how players are judged and remembered.

“That's my philosophy: you never compare the greats. You can't compare Pele with the generations that followed him, and with [Diego] Maradona, the comparisons never end.

“[Zinedine] 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, Olise does not need to be “the next” anyone, nor a counterweight to Bellingham in some imagined hierarchy. If Makelele is right, the winger has enough talent to force his own chapter into the game’s history – whether or not Real Madrid decide to act on the advice of one of their most trusted old midfield generals.