Michael Olise's stock has rarely been higher — Bayern Munich's back-to-back Player of the Season, a standout of France's World Cup summer, and the subject of transfer talk running into nine figures. Now he is facing a far less flattering headline: a German woman says he has cut off contact with their 20-month-old daughter and stopped paying to support her.
Fatima Zaunbrecher, 34, from Düsseldorf, says she and Olise carried on a long-distance relationship for roughly two years after meeting on Instagram in 2022, when he was still playing for Crystal Palace in the Premier League. By her account, the relationship had already ended by the time she discovered she was pregnant.
Their daughter, whom Zaunbrecher named Aaliyah Noor, is now about 20 months old. She says a paternity test carried out in Munich confirmed Olise as the father and that he legally acknowledged it — but that he has never once visited the child.
"It hurts me to see his cruelty towards his child," Zaunbrecher said, adding that all contact with Olise now runs through his lawyers, who she says advised him against seeing the girl at all.
Money sits at the center of the dispute as well. Zaunbrecher describes the financial offers made on Olise's behalf as inadequate, at one point calling a proposal "ridiculously low." Reported figures vary — an early proposal put in the low hundreds of euros a month, later said to have risen to roughly €2,000 — sums she contrasts with a player reportedly earning close to €14 million a year at Bayern.
Olise's legal representatives have firmly rejected her account. In response to the allegations, they said the player offered assistance "from the outset" and remains open to an amicable settlement, insisting he never refused to support the child financially. They say Zaunbrecher separately pursued a claim of around €60,000 a month through the French courts that was not upheld, and that Olise's own offer exceeds the maximum child-support level allowed under German law.
Neither side has made court filings, the paternity report or a written settlement offer public, so for now the dispute rests on competing accounts — Zaunbrecher's version of events against the firm denial issued by Olise's lawyers.
Olise, 24, was born in London to a Nigerian father and a French-Algerian mother and chose to represent France at international level. He joined Bayern from Crystal Palace in 2024 in a deal worth close to £50 million and has since been voted the club's Player of the Season in consecutive campaigns, alongside a prominent run for France at this summer's World Cup.
The story has broken at an awkward moment for Bayern as well: Real Madrid have been repeatedly linked with a club-record move for Olise, with reported fees north of €200 million, even as the German champions insist he is not for sale and Real Madrid have publicly denied any contact with the player or his camp.
For a player enjoying the best form of his career, the personal fallout is a reminder that off-field scrutiny tends to grow in direct proportion to on-field success — and that, without documents to settle it, this dispute is likely to keep running in parallel with his transfer saga.
