Olivia Smith interview: From wanting to ‘become a legend’ aged seven to playing for Canada aged 15

It is a grey, cold November Sunday in St Helens, just outside Liverpool, but Sean Smith might as well be on any touchline he has paced over the past 17 years.

He is speaking about watching his daughter, Olivia Smith, who has just been taken down by Chelsea defender Millie Bright after the 20-year-old Liverpool forward raced through on goal. “It never gets any easier,” he says. The sight is familiar. In a sense, a way of life: Olivia pulled back by the opposition in a desperate attempt to corral her.

Soon, Olivia is back on her feet, the other part of that way of life. “Once I find my feet,” the Canada international says the following day, “that’s really it”.

Olivia’s career has been an unhesitating campaign of feet-finding. In the space of two years, she has gone from the semi-professional League1 Ontario (named Golden Boot winner, Young Player of the Season and Forward of the Year) to the youngest member of Canada’s 2023 Women’s World Cup squad (18 years old) to Sporting Lisbon (named Campeonato Nacional Feminino’s Best Young Player and Revelation player) and now to Liverpool. She is the women’s team’s record signing (£210,000, $266,000). In October, she became the first woman to score at Anfield. She has won Liverpool’s Player of the Month award for the past two months. In Canada, she is tipped as the next Christine Sinclair. Chelsea wanted her. So did Paris Saint-Germain and Brighton & Hove Albion.

This is how Olivia prefers life, because this is how she has always known it: nothing getting easier, yet finding a way to adapt and conquer.

The day after Liverpool’s Women’s Super League (WSL) 3-0 defeat by Chelsea, sits down to lunch with Olivia and Sean. It is Sean’s final day in Liverpool, despite arriving just two days earlier. His next trip is not until March, when Liverpool host Manchester United at Anfield.

The distance is tough. “When she was growing up, she was my best friend,” says Sean.

The Smiths know reaching this space requires sacrifice. Olivia was not conjured from the football ether to entertain Liverpool fans. Her journey is riddled with human moments, from missing her own graduation due to training, to being suspended by a coach at the Ontario National development program in pursuit of success, to countless months away from her family.

“What was our mentality?” Sean asks.

“When you’re not out there working,” Olivia says, “there’s somebody else out there in the world who is.”

Born in Whitby, Canada, Olivia was destined for a life in sport. Before she could walk, nights were spent cuddled into the crook of her dad’s arm, watching whatever sport was on television. A lifelong Liverpool fan, Sean placed a football at her feet “as soon as I could walk”, Olivia says. “It was him holding me up by my hands, me trying to kick the football around.”

“I know people are going to be like — you’re crazy, no one knows at three years old,” Sean adds. “But this kid had this thing. She wanted to take the ball, beat everyone, put the ball into the net. She was doing it at such a young age.”

Her talent was obvious, but it was the visceral hunger for competition — not simply winning — that fuelled Olivia. During school breaks, aged seven, she forced herself into the boys’ football games. She was not always accepted, returning home with black eyes and bruised legs from fights.

“The day the boys took her soccer ball and kicked it onto the roof of the school, that was the day we knew we needed to do something,” Sean says.

Olivia was enrolled in taekwondo classes. Watch Olivia on the pitch and her delicate footwork, her patterns of movement and her balance speak to that background.

“I was also mentally and physically tortured in taekwondo,” Olivia says with a laugh. She describes how her teacher (an 18-year-old female fifth Dan Master) did not like her technique and as a solution, harnessed Olivia into a strap and forced her to do kick jumps for an entire class while her peers watched.

“Until I was mentally broken. I was crying.”

Did she ever beg her dad not to go?

“Every day. But then the day after, I’d go back to my dad and say, ‘OK, are we ready to go?’.” Sean nods his head in agreement. “It’s one of those things where right after, you’re distraught,” Olivia continues. “You never want to see that person again. But then the competitive edge in you returns. I enjoyed that. That helped with my mentality of never giving up.”

At 11 years old, the cost and time of multiple sports led Olivia to give up taekwondo, though she is quick to clarify that football was always king. Where other kids asked parents to read them bedtime stories about cats in hats, Olivia begged hers to read David Beckham’s Making It Real: My Soccer Skills Book “every night”.

Amid doodled hearts in her Justice Girls diary, football dominated. Her dream team: Canada, USA, Brazil. Her dream college: Virginia, Stanford, Florida State. Her dream number: 11. Her moves to master: double stepover, Rivellino, L pull. Her goals: become a legend.

“And you see there,” Sean says, pointing to a section of the page his daughter entitled, ‘What I could have done better’.

Sean beams with pride. “She’s seven!”

Olivia is not embarrassed. Behind a bubbly disposition is ferocious self-assurance. To gain inspiration before games, she used to watch highlights of Marta, Ronaldinho and Sinclair. “Now, I watch highlights of me.”

She points back to the diary. “Even back then, I swear, I wanted to win a Ballon d’Or one day. I wanted to play in a World Cup, in an Olympics, to play for my national team. I could see myself meeting my idols and playing against them.”

Olivia’s life became contoured by football: club training four days a week, daily one-on-one sessions, meet-and-greets with stars she wanted to emulate. Her basement was transformed into a technical skill cave: ladders and cones on the floor to perfect her footwork, a table with its legs removed pushed against the wall to perfect her touch.

At 12 years old, Olivia was invited to join Canada Under-17s for a trip to British Columbia, her first time away from her family. Three years later, she travelled to China with the senior team, becoming the nation’s youngest international at 15 years and 94 days when she came on in the 86th minute against Brazil in the Women’s International Tournament. That year, she was named Canada Soccer’s Young Player of the Year.

But her progress was not without challenges. Smith says she was suspended multiple times from the Ontario National Development Program — run by the Canadian Soccer Association as part of the development pathway — for soliciting additional training and opportunities during the program’s “off season”, when the coach permitted only fitness training.

“We thought the different voices you hear, the different trainers and players you’re around, that’s how you form your own individuality,” Sean says. “And we were worried if we didn’t train, if she abides by these rules, then she might not be good enough.”

When the suspensions ended, “recurring problems” persisted. A new head of Ontario National Development Program was eventually appointed to address the concerns around the program, but the influence on Olivia was stark. “It got to a point where I thought I don’t know if I want to do this.”

Conversations with Mark Krikorian, then head coach at Florida State Seminoles where Olivia hoped to attend, eventually led to Olivia joining Aaron Byrd’s Next Level Training program (USWNT players Naomi Girma and Catarina Macario were both developed there) in Michigan during the off months.

“They put me on a plane, I went to Michigan, I had no idea where I was staying or going,” Olivia says. “I’d never met Aaron before. I got to the facilities with my suitcase and Aaron was like, ‘Ready to train?’. And I just left my suitcase, got my boots out and on we went.”

Olivia’s smile remains as she recounts training to the point of being sick, of twice-a-day gym sessions and hours-long tactics lessons.

Beside her, Sean’s expression is a mixture of admiration and remorse. He and Olivia’s mum made sure to attend every game and practice and kept hold of all her awards. But Olivia missed out on parts of a “normal” childhood. Birthday parties, sleepovers, her own graduation all became incidental to the game she loved.

“Sometimes I feel bad because maybe you didn’t have the childhood you wanted,” Sean says, looking at his daughter. “You had to grow up so fast.”

It is here he begins to tear up.

“Realistically, I didn’t get the childhood I would have wanted,” Olivia says. “Looking back on it now, I don’t think it would’ve benefited me in any way. Now, it doesn’t really intrigue me to be going out, drinking, partying. I take pride in that because I feel like one mistake can ruin a career.”

Next Level Training earned Olivia a place at Florida State under Krikorian in 2022. But when he chose to depart before the season began that autumn, Olivia recommitted to Penn State University. To prepare, she played for North Toronto Nitros in Ontario that summer, turning the semi-professional league into her own personal plaything as she scored 18 goals in 11 games.

“Remember against Waterloo?” asks Sean. The two break into laughter. “I challenged her to score four goals. She bangs in her fourth, stares into the crowd and thrusts her hand with the number four into the air.”

A sense of inevitability surrounded Olivia, but a medial cruciate ligament injury sustained during Canada’s U20 World Cup campaign in Costa Rica that summer threatened to upend everything. She arrived at Penn State “with crutches and a knee brace”. Her season statistics were unrecognisable: one goal, one assist.

“I only went to university to play football. So the fact I couldn’t…” Smith trails off. “It’s a miracle that someone saw me within those couple of games.”

PSG and Chelsea expressed interest, but Olivia preferred the promise of competition Sporting offered and signed a three-year deal, her first professional contract. In 18 league appearances, Olivia netted 13 goals and produced nine assists as Sporting finished runners-up behind Benfica.

Other clubs, including Brighton, caught wind. But it was Liverpool — off the back of a fourth-place finish, with Matt Beard named WSL manager of the year — that seized Olivia’s attention.

A Zoom call with Beard and club scout Russ Richardson followed, then a trip to Liverpool (a first for the family) in June.

Liverpool eschewed their transfer model to sign Olivia, forking out a club record £210,000. So far, she has looked a bargain, establishing herself as one of the WSL’s best young forwards and Liverpool’s main threat. The reputation brings difficulties. As was the case against Chelsea, she was a target against Manchester City at Anfield last month. A challenge in the first five minutes from defender Alex Greenwood left her back in agony, forcing her off for the second half after putting Liverpool 1-0 up. Liverpool lost 2-1.

“It’s frustrating (being targeted), but I kind of enjoy it,” Olivia says. “I know that sounds absolutely insane. But knowing that what’s on a defender’s mind is just stopping me is nice. And it opens up opportunities for everyone else. In open play, we don’t create as many opportunities as we should. That I can do that is important.”

Olivia’s exploits have earned her comparisons with the recently-retired Sinclair, a player Olivia once worshipped from the stands, then shared the pitch with years later. It was Sinclair who assured Sean in 2019 in China she would “take Olivia under my wing”.

“Everyone’s like, we’re looking for the next Christine Sinclair, but she’s her own legacy,” Olivia says. “Realistically, it’s hard to live up to what she’s done. It’s an honour to have learned from her, but I want to build my own legacy.”

Her maturity would be disorienting if it was not so absorbing. Yet, even sometimes she surprises herself.

“The first couple of weeks of training (with Liverpool), I was like, this is really hard,” she says. “But once I find my feet, like I did in Portugal, I know my confidence is here.” She looks at her dad and grins. “I’m good.”

Does that mean she might score four against Everton in the Merseyside derby?

“Could you imagine?” Sean laughs. “Give them one of these.” He makes a four with his hand and thrusts it into the air.

This article originally appeared in The Athletic.

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