Real Madrid have got it wrong on Olise – he’s worth more than €150m!

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Robin Bairner | Chief Editor

Accredited football journalist and editor covering the game since 2006

Real Madrid’s secret it out: they want to sign Michael Olise from Bayern Munich and they want to do it for €150 million. But Florentino Perez has badly misjudged the situation if he believes a deal is possible.

Madrid president Perez is a man used to making grand statements, particularly in the context of a presidential election battle.

Yet ahead of the vote on 7 June, the incumbent supremo at the Bernabeu set the transfer rumour mill into overdrive when he made a huge announcement.

“I have some news to share,” Perez announced on ‘Horizonte’. “On Tuesday, I'm going to make a significant offer to a Champions League club for a top player. It would be the largest transfer fee Real Madrid has ever paid. It would be around €150 million. A hint? I can't give you any, I'm just hinting at what we're going to do.

“You remember I brought Luis Figo, David Beckham, Ronaldo, Kaka. This kid of top, top name. It’s that level of player. The excitement will be crazy.”

Real Madrid's €150m mystery man revealed as Michael Olise

Perez went so far as to deny that the player he is going to target is Bayern Munich winger Olise, yet a matter of hours later, the truth emerged.

A string of leading sources, including AS, the Guardian and the Telegraph all came to the same conclusion: the Real Madrid president was not telling the truth.

The universal opinion is that it is Olise that Madrid are dreaming of, with Fabrizio Romano subsequently adding:

“I can tell you that Florentino Perez has completely fallen in love with Michael Olise. I can tell you that Florentino Perez believes Olise could be the perfect addition to bring the magic back to the Bernabeu.”

In any realm of politics, misdirection, as we will kindly put it, is a valuable tool. In this case, Perez is using it to win votes.

Bayern have already given multiple clear indications on their stance over Olise, though previously with the context of Liverpool in mind.

Uli Hoeness, the club’s honorary president, was asked about selling the Frenchman to the Premier League side for €200m back in March, when there were rumours of such a bid coming from Anfield.

“If that’s true – and I don’t believe it is. Liverpool spent €500m this year and are having a very bad season,” he said (via Sky Germany). “We won’t be contributing to them playing better again next year.”

In this case, ‘Liverpool’ can be replaced with ‘Real Madrid’ and the answer will remain the same.

He added: “We play this game for our fans… It does them little good if we have €200m in the bank and play worse football every Saturday because of it.”

Olise’s transfer value has exploded

Even beyond Bayern’s official stance, though, Real Madrid are actually underselling Olise’s quality based on FootballTransfers’ Estimated Transfer Value (ETV) calculations. These are made based on thousands of historical transfers as well as hundreds of in-game data points, which calculate the value of any given individual player.

Olise’s latest value for June 2026 sits at €171m. This is a career-high figure for the 24-year-old, whose meteoric rise is displayed by the fact that his ETV sat at only €78.5m this time last year.

He has become the second most valuable player in the world, lagging only behind Barcelona’s Lamine Yamal (€191m) and substantially ahead of Real Madrid’s ETV leader Jude Bellingham (€121m).

Perez’s idea that €150m will take Olise to Real Madrid looks laughable in this context, and even though the president did suggest this would simply be an opening offer, with Bayern’s stance on the matter firm, the Frenchman will be going nowhere this summer.

One suspects, though, that given only a bid was promised, the Bernabeu chief already knew that.