“Look at the ball by Olise and the weight of the pass: it’s inch-perfect.”Brendan Flanagan, Reading’s head of academy recruitment, is waxing lyrical about Michael Olise’s through ball that set Kylian Mbappe clear in the first half, and resulted in a France penalty.“Michael just sees things differently; he always seems to be in space, and his passing ability is exquisite,” Flanagan added.Olise is a player well-known to Flanagan.A decade ago, he persuaded Reading to take a chance on Olise after he had been released by Chelsea and Manchester City.Ten years on and Flanagan is watching Olise — who has become one of world football’s outstanding players — turn in another impressive performance (illustrated in his dashboard below). Olise has registered five assists in six matches for France at the World Cup.Sat alongside The Athletic for France’s 2-0 victory over Morocco in Thursday’s quarter-final, Flanagan said he felt pride at seeing Olise’s success.“I look at videos from when he was in Reading’s first team,” he told The Athletic from the living room of his house in Oxford. “Some of the things he used to do were just ridiculous. And he’s got better and better, which is a credit to him.”It was summer 2016 when Olise came on Flanagan’s radar, after Chelsea and then City let the teenager go.As The Athletic previously detailed, Olise’s footballing ability and talent were never in doubt, but there was a feeling that he could be challenging to manage.After leaving Chelsea, Olise spent a period at City, and he was signed up to St Bede’s, the independent school that many of the club’s graduates attend.He found the adjustment difficult. Olise was living far from home. He was then let go by City and returned to London.It was around that time that Flanagan remembered taking a call from Darren Richards, a friend and scout who used to work for Tottenham Hotspur, who suggested he give Olise a chance at Reading.Flanagan said he faced resistance, given Olise had failed to stick at two clubs.“I was like, ‘Just get him in, let’s make our own opinion’,” Flanagan said. “And we did. The first morning he came in, he rang me up at Reading train station, and he was the most polite kid.