Olise Is One Assist Away From Breaking a Record Pelé Set 56 Years Ago

Creating a clear goal (assist) against the world’s best defensive setups requires elite vision.

Pelé set the Men’s World Cup assist record in 1970, with 6. Nobody has touched it since.

As of July 15, 2026, Michael Olise has 5 assists at the current World Cup, with the tournament still running. He needs one more to draw level with the greatest assister in the competition’s history.

The context for just how significant that is comes from FIFA's own historical record of top assisters at every World Cup since 1966.

Michael Olise has 5 assists at the 2026 World Cup, putting him one short of Pelé’s all-time single-tournament record of 6, set at Mexico 1970.
No player has led a World Cup with more than 4 assists since Thomas Hassler in 1994, making Olise’s tally the most dominant individual creative performance in 32 years.
FIFA data covering every World Cup from 1966 to 2022 shows just how rare this level of output is; five tournaments were led by players with only 3 assists.

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Bruno Guimarães of Brazil and Brahim Díaz of Morocco sit behind Olise with 4 assists each, while Martin Ødegaard of Norway and Bukayo Saka of England are on 3 assists each.

If those totals hold, the 2026 World Cup will have produced one of the widest gaps between first and second place in the assist chart in the tournament’s modern history.

Díaz’s presence at the top of the chart is itself a thread worth noting.

In 1998, Morocco’s Tahar El-Khalej co-led the World Cup in assists alongside Ronaldo and Dennis Bergkamp, finishing France 1998 tied at 3 with six players from six nations.

Twenty-eight years later, another Moroccan sits second in the same chart. It is one of the quieter patterns FIFA’s historical data reveals.

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