That's the anecdote his first youth coach, Michael Richards, chose to share as part of an L'Equipe investigation into the Bayern Munich winger's formative years.
"I remember a match where Michael and his parents arrived late; we were losing 2-0 at half-time when he finally arrived. Result: 3-2 to us, and a hat-trick from Michael," Richards recalled.
"One day, he also scored an incredible goal from the halfway line, volleying a clearance from the goalkeeper."
That kind of instinctive brilliance, it turns out, was never limited to football. According to Daniel Coker, Olise's former maths teacher, the London-born player was startlingly gifted across almost every sport he tried.
"At football of course, but also in every sport he discovered - hockey, tennis, table tennis, cross-country, basketball," Coker said. Olise reportedly also showed a real aptitude for cricket, a sport in which he was, by Coker's account, "exceptional" - a trait he likely inherited given that his father was a noted cricketer.
The picture painted by those who taught and coached him as a boy is one of a rare, all-round athlete who happened to settle on football, rather than a player who simply worked harder than his peers at one discipline from an early age.
It offers a glimpse into the raw sporting ability that has since taken Olise from London's academy football through Crystal Palace and on to Bayern Munich, where his versatility and instinct for the spectacular have become defining traits of his senior career at the top of the European game.
Such anecdotes have taken on fresh significance this summer, with Olise now firmly established as one of the standout attacking talents to emerge from England in recent years, his early multi-sport background often cited by those who know him as the root of the natural balance and improvisation that mark out his play on the pitch today.