Michael Olise would be about as close to the perfect Mohamed Salah replacement as Liverpool could hope to find.
The Bayern Munich winger is under contract until 2029, and a move this summer always looked almost impossible. He has been one of the five best players in Europe this season.
If Olise is ever going to leave Bayern for Anfield, it sounds like it will need to become a situation similar to Alexander Isak at Newcastle. Bayern are not planning to open the door themselves.
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Karl-Heinz Rummenigge lays down Bayern stance on Michael Olise
Karl-Heinz Rummenigge was speaking in an interview with t-online ahead of Bayern Munich’s Champions League semi-final against Paris Saint-Germain.
Rummenigge is one of the biggest figures in Bayern history, having been a legendary player, a long-serving chief executive and now a member of the club’s supervisory board.
Asked whether Bayern could afford to reject a possible €200m offer for Olise, Rummenigge pointed back to a decision the club made after Chelsea tried to sign Franck Ribery in 2009.
He said: “I’ll tell you a story from the past. In 2009, we had an incredible offer from Chelsea for Franck Ribery. That would have been a new world record transfer at the time. I went to our then finance director Karl Hopfner and Uli Hoeness. We discussed for two hours what we should do with this offer.
“On that day, we made a fundamental decision that in future we would no longer sell any player who we would miss from a sporting perspective. And this unwritten law still applies today. For a player like Olise, there is no price tag that would make us flinch.”
That is about as clear as it gets. Bayern are not saying they want £100m, £150m or £200m. They are saying they do not want to sell.
Olise would have to push for Liverpool move like Alexander Isak
The Isak saga showed that even clubs with no intention of selling can eventually be forced into a corner.
Newcastle did not want to lose Isak, but the striker made his position clear, missed key parts of pre-season, publicly spoke about broken promises and made it very difficult for the club to reintegrate him. It’s the kind of situation Liverpool would probably need with the French winger.
Bayern sound like they have no intention of selling, and that stance is unlikely to soften given the trajectory he is on. Olise is already one of the best attackers in world football, and he’s only just now entering his prime years.
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Would he really agitate for a move to Liverpool? Or would Real Madrid or PSG be more likely if he ever decided to leave Germany? Who knows.
For now, anyway, Olise seems happy at Bayern and they see him as untouchable.
That does not make an Anfield move impossible. But it does make it clear that unless Olise himself changes the picture, Bayern are not going to.
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