A box of nicotine pouches was found among Michael Olise’s belongings during France’s World Cup camp, turning a small locker-room discovery into a bigger football story. The item was spotted in recent hours, putting the Bayern Munich winger at the centre of a conversation about how widely nicotine pouches are being used in the game.
Olise is a French international, and the timing matters because he has already been drawing attention for his form in Germany and the interest around him that followed. Now the focus has shifted from his football to what was sitting in his locker, and that has made olise a search term far beyond France’s camp.
Nicotine pouches are used orally, placed between the gum and lip. They do not contain tobacco and are classed as a white nicotine product, but they still deliver nicotine, usually in pouches that contain between 5 and 20 milligrams and can work for between 20 and 60 minutes. The brand linked to Olise is sold in mint, watermelon and strawberry flavours, a sign of how these products are marketed as a discreet alternative rather than something that looks like traditional tobacco.
That easier image sits uneasily with the health warning attached to the product. A 6 mg pouch can raise heart rate by an average of 10 beats per minute, and nicotine remains the main addictive ingredient. Some experts present nicotine pouches as a lower-risk option than smoking because there is no combustion, but that does not make them harmless, and it does not erase the fact that they can be addictive.
The scale of use inside professional football makes the finding more than a private habit. A Loughborough University study found that one in five professional players reported using nicotine pouches, snus or both, after surveying 628 male players from the Premier League and the English Football League and 51 players from the Women’s Super League. That is a sizeable slice of the sport, and it helps explain why a box in one locker has become a talking point.
For Olise, the practical consequences are still unclear. No further action, investigation or sanction has been confirmed, and the immediate issue is not discipline but visibility: a national-team camp has exposed a product that many players appear to be using quietly, even as the health debate around nicotine moves closer to football’s centre circle.
