No matter how well they play between now and the end of the tournament, there is one World Cup record that Lionel Messi and Kylian Mbappe are probably not going to break.Back in 1958, French forward Just Fontaine netted 13 goals in a single tournament, meaning both will need to at least double their tally in the next two weeks.The assist record, on the other hand, is suddenly within reach.Michael Olise only needs to create one more goal to equal a feat that has stood for 56 years. His five assists in France’s opening four games have been a ruthless continuation of his club form, having racked up 26 in all competitions for Bayern Munich last season. It leaves him just three away from Messi’s outright record at the World Cup, having played 25 games fewer in all.The numbers are ludicrous and Olise’s technical ability and purring confidence are off the charts. Unsurprisingly, no player has been involved in more passing sequences leading to shots than the 24-year-old this summer, given complete freedom to roam and dictate attacks with his abilities on the ball.Against Sweden in the last 32, he dropped between centre-backs, drifted wide on both flanks, and even got involved in quick pass-and-move patterns with full-backs and holding midfielders deep inside his own half. His match dashboard below helps to illustrate the extent to which he helped France to move forward across the width of the pitch.Of course, it isn’t just tempo and quick combinations that make Olise stand out. His incision in the final third, able to break down deep defences with disguised, slide-rule passes and teasing crosses into the box, makes him a constant threat.The bar chart below ranks players across Europe’s top five leagues on Opta’s expected assists (xA) metric per 90 minutes played. It is a model that measures the likelihood that a given pass will become an assist, rewarding players who consistently pass into dangerous areas, regardless of whether the receiver takes a shot or not.As we can see, some of the world’s most inventive midfielders rise to the top, but no one comes close to Olise, relentlessly chipping away at defences with high-quality deliveries and weighted passes through the gaps, putting the ball exactly where the centre-backs don’t want it.Olise’s first meaningful contribution of this World Cup was a through ball that helped to break open a stubborn Senegalese defence. France had only mustered two shots on goal throughout the first half, but Olise came out firing after the break, slipping two neat passes through to Mbappe even before the crucial assist.It was a flicker of imagination to sweep the ball into Mbappe’s path, spotting the razor-sharp movement of his striker up ahead despite the opposition’s compact defensive shape.