Michael Olise emerges as France’s most dangerous player during Nations League games

PARIS (AP) — With Kylian Mbappé injured and Ousmane Dembélé out of form, Michael Olise emerged as France’s most dangerous player during recent Nations League games.

Olise lit up the Stade de France on Monday night with a performance which left coach Zinedine Zidane awestruck.

"What he's doing is just exceptional,” Zidane said.

Monday's match against Belgium was evenly balanced at 1-1 when Olise replaced Dembélé on the hour. He ended up with two goals and an assist in a stunning cameo performance alongside Désiré Doué and Rayan Cherki, who also came on.

The trio dazzled with the speed and precision of their passing, and the mobile forwards were involved in a sublime fourth goal.

Cherki switched play from the right to the left for Doué, who then played the ball behind the defense for Olise to run onto and finish with a first-time shot.

“It’s what we love,” Zidane said.

Usually a reserved character, Doué rolled on the ground with Olise in his arms in celebration. Just minutes earlier, Doué set up Olise's first goal and they combined with a rare intuition.

Doué scored France's equalizer, and Olise set up the mercurial Cherki before stealing the show with his late brace.

This bodes well for the future of France’s attack, given that Doué is only 21, Cherki is 23 and Olise is 24.

In a team full of gifted attacking players, Olise is surpassing Ballon d'Or winner Dembélé as France's chief creator.

“Olise is absolutely tearing it up. He’s right at the top, soaring above the clouds," former France standout midfielder Alain Giresse told sports daily L'Equipe on Tuesday. "He’s really coming into his own."

Olise had the most assists at the World Cup with seven. He didn't score and missed good chances after warming up for the tournament with a clinical hat trick against Northern Ireland.

He recovered his scoring groove in the Nations League with four in four games.

After setting up Mbappé's goal in a 1-0 win at Turkey — the game where the Real Madrid star got injured — Olise scored a late solo goal in a 1-0 win in Belgium with a mesmerising solo run from deep. Zidane reacted by sprinting down the touchline and booting a soccer ball as if he'd scored it himself.

Against Italy on Friday, Olise broke the deadlock with a superb dipping free kick. Tellingly, the quick-thinking Cherki was involved in both of those goals.

Giresse played alongside three-time Ballon d'Or winner Michel Platini during the 1980s, in a brilliant France midfield known as the “Golden Quartet.” He summed up the multiple threats in France's current attack.

“Playing out on the right allows Cherki to operate centrally. So, we’ve got two creators (playmakers). It’s a long time since we’ve had players of that caliber," Giresse said. "Then you add in Doué, (Bradley) Barcola, and Dembélé, and Mbappé who wasn’t even playing.”

As the players warmed up against Belgium, the cameras caught Cherki showing Olise how to do a trick.

Cherki flicked the ball up with the inside of his left foot onto his right heel before spinning around, and controlling the ball again on his shin as it landed. Olise came close but couldn't quite pull it off, while Cherki did it again with remarkable ease.

See AP’s full soccer coverage here

France's Rayan Cherki, centre, challenges for the ball with Belgium's Joaquin Seys, centre left, during the Nations League soccer match between France and Belgium in Saint-Denis near Paris, Monday, Oct. 5, 2026. (AP Photo/Teresa Suarez)

France's Desire Doue celebrates after scoring during the Nations League soccer match between France and Belgium in Saint-Denis near Paris, Monday, Oct. 5, 2026. (AP Photo/Teresa Suarez)

France's Michael Olise warms up prior to the Nations League soccer match between France and Belgium in Saint-Denis near Paris, Monday, Oct. 5, 2026. (AP Photo/Teresa Suarez)

France's Desire Doue and France's Michael Olise celebrate after scoring during the Nations League soccer match between France and Belgium in Saint-Denis near Paris, Monday, Oct. 5, 2026. (AP Photo/Teresa Suarez)

PARIS (AP) — Pupils blockaded French high schools on Tuesday as thousands of demonstrators marched in cities across the country to support the teenagers’ demands for more education funding, increasing pressure on the government of outgoing President Emmanuel Macron.

Crowds waving flags and placards in Marseille in the south, Strasbourg in the east and other cities showed how protests that began at a high school in the Paris region in mid-September have grown into a nationwide movement — the latest to have marked Macron’s nearly decade-long tenure.

“The only response they’ve received so far is repression,” Sigrid Gerardin, a Paris high school teacher, said of the pupils.

Felix Barney, a university student, described the police response as disproportionate. “It doesn’t have any sense to hit minors,” he said.

More than two weeks of class boycotts and school blockades, along with a forceful police response that has led to more than 6,100 arrests, mostly of minors, have also become a flashpoint in the early days of the presidential election campaign. Macron cannot run for a third consecutive term. His successor will be elected in May.

The teenage protesters have struck a chord amid widespread discontent in France. Frustrations extend beyond immediate difficulties, such as fuel prices that have soared because of the Iran war, to broader concerns about constraints on public spending, rising poverty and wealth inequality under Macron. Against that backdrop, pupils’ complaints that education funding shortfalls are endangering their futures have found a sympathetic audience.

“You say ‘young people are the future’ so listen to them,” read a handwritten placard attached to a metal barrier outside a Paris school.

At the Hélène Boucher lycée, or high school, in Paris' 20th district, protesters on Tuesday tipped trash cans and bicycles on their sides to create a makeshift barricade.

Like hundreds of others around the country, the school was closed. Authorities began shutting schools last week to take some steam out of the demonstrations after widespread damage to schools and mounting injuries among staff, students and police.

Interior Minister Laurent Nunez on Tuesday defended policing methods used against high schoolers, despite a growing list of gruesome injuries blamed on officers' riot-control weapons. The latest was a 15-year-old who lost a hand on Monday, seemingly ripped off by a police stun grenade.

Nunez said the police response has been proportionate in “almost all cases.”

The widespread use of arrests, tear gas and riot-control weapons against teenagers is fueling defiance and angering some parents and teachers. Nunez said protests transformed at times into rioting, requiring police intervention. He said 715 officers have been injured.

At Hélène Boucher, parents and other adults positioned themselves Tuesday between protesters and police keeping watch.

“They are our children. Teachers, parents, federations, we all share the same goal: the protection of children’s rights, and it is a legitimate right to demonstrate and to make demands,” said Emilia Sichili Suriam, who is a member of an association of parents.

School blockades and protests began in the Paris region in mid-September before spreading to other cities and towns. Demonstrators have voiced a range of grievances, often centering on a lack of resources and opportunities for students in disadvantaged schools despite the promise of France’s national motto: “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.”

Students have drawn attention to rundown classrooms that lack basics such as desks and chairs, become sweltering in summer without air conditioning and, in some cases, are infested with rats. Other common complaints include staff shortages and exhausting workloads. French high school students’ compulsory classroom hours are among the highest in Europe.

__

Associated Press journalists John Leicester in Paris and Mike Corder in The Hague contributed.

EDS NOTE: OBSCENITY - Students block the entrance of a high school before a demonstration against under-resourced schools, in Paris, Tuesday, Oct. 6, 2026. (AP Photo/Aurelien Morissard)

Protest slogans are posted on a school wall by high school students as they gather before a demonstration against under-resourced schools, in Paris, Tuesday, Oct. 6, 2026. (AP Photo/Aurelien Morissard)

High school students march during a protest against under-resourced schools, in Bordeaux, France, Tuesday, Oct. 6, 2026. (AP Photo/Caroline Blumberg)

Riot police face high school students as they gather before a demonstration against under-resourced schools in Paris, Tuesday, Oct. 6, 2026. (AP Photo/Aurelien Morissard)

Riot police face high school students as they gather before a demonstration against under-resourced schools in Paris, Tuesday, Oct. 6, 2026. (AP Photo/Aurelien Morissard)

Riot police face high school students as they gather before a demonstration against under-resourced schools in Paris, Tuesday, Oct. 6, 2026. (AP Photo/Aurelien Morissard)

Students gather on the street before a demonstration against under-resourced schools, in Paris, Tuesday, Oct. 6, 2026. (AP Photo/Aurelien Morissard)

Students hold a banner reading "Youth in anger" as they gather before a demonstration against under-resourced schools, in Paris, Tuesday, Oct. 6, 2026. (AP Photo/Aurelien Morissard)

Students gather on the street before a demonstration against under-resourced schools, in Paris, Tuesday, Oct. 6, 2026. (AP Photo/Aurelien Morissard)