How Smith became women's first £1m player

August 26, 2026 154news Acacia

Taekwondo & a stats diary: Inside Olivia Smith's rise to the top - BBC Sport

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Taekwondo, stats, painful goodbyes - how Smith became women's first £1m player

Image source: Getty Images

Image caption: Olivia Smith joined Arsenal for a record £1m from Liverpool

By Emma Sanders

BBC Sport women’s football news reporter

Published 20 minutes ago

Olivia Smith has lived her life under a spotlight since she was 15 - but she had been preparing herself even before she became a professional footballer. Now 22, Smith became the first £1m women's footballer last year when Arsenal signed her in a world record deal from Liverpool.

She had joined Liverpool for a club record of £210,000 just one season earlier, having made a name for herself when she was given her Canada debut aged 15. Smith became the first woman to score for Liverpool at Anfield in a Women's Super League match in October 2025.

Now, for the second year in a row, she is the first non-English recipient of the PFA Women's Young Player of the Year award.

But how did Smith's sacrifices early in life help her reach the top?

Humble & sweet, but a lion - the story of the first female £1m player

Published 6 September 2025

Find interviews and extra content on the BBC Women's Football Weekly feed

Splits, planks, South American and Jamaican flair

Smith grew up in the small Canadian city of Whitby, where from a young age she was encouraged to play football by her father, Sean. She jumped between local clubs every year and played with boys until the age of 12 before finally settling into a girls' team. Clearly talented, she continued to train with boys at the same time, while enjoying a multi-cultural upbringing around Toronto.

"My parents have made a lot of sacrifices taking me to all these places and moving every couple of years," Smith told BBC Sport.

"My dad's Jamaican, my mom's Chilean and Peruvian. There's so much football culture within those. I grasped a lot of that from my dad's dad who played football and my mom's dad also played in South America. I think I have that flair in my DNA."

But Smith later experienced bullying and turned to different sports as coping mechanisms, not knowing at the time how it would help her football career.

"I did taekwondo as a kid. I was getting bullied in school so it was more of a defensive mechanism kind of thing," said Smith.

"I did gymnastics too. That really helps with my agility. I find that, for my stature, I'm quite flexible as well, which really helps injury prevention. Taekwondo really helped with my discipline and arguably my shooting ability in terms of its speed."

Smith also thinks the unusual sporting background helped her when dealing with attention and pressure, as well as bullying. "It helps with just the discipline on and off the pitch in simple tasks that are really important in my day-to-day life," added Smith.