Olivia Smith joined Arsenal for a record £1m from Liverpool. 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. Find interviews and extra content on the BBC Women's Football Weekly feed.

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. Of course, I [enjoy the different] food, music, all those kinds of things. In Toronto, you find it is a very multicultural place and that was really cool growing up."

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.

"I think mainly it was just to keep me active, out of trouble, and it was just for fun. Thankfully it contributed to my footballing career."

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. "In gymnastics, you have to do splits or planks for [a length of time]. It's really hard mentally so that helped me mature. I developed a lot of mental toughness."

Smith scored against Corinthians in this year's Women's Champions Cup final.

It is not just Smith who has invested in football since a young age. Her dad, Sean, was tracking her statistics to monitor her progress.

"That is his favourite thing in the world to do. When I was younger, he would literally film all my games," said Smith. "After games, we would go back and watch everything, see what I could have done better and what I did well. He kept a diary of the goals that I scored, what minute it was in and things like that. He still has it to this day. He loves it!"

Beyond football, Smith loves to cook and watch TV series - Law and Order: SVU is a current favourite - and she says she is "dying to get a puppy".

The young forward has learned to become independent, having left home as a teenager in order to chase a professional career. But it hasn't been easy. When Smith moved to Michigan aged 15 on her own, she didn't know where she would be living when she boarded the plane.

"Moving around a lot, you're sacrificing relationships because you make good friends in one place, then you have to move," said Smith. "That makes it quite tough, especially when you're young. I struggled a lot with that. I had to leave to get training elsewhere.

"It helped me get used to what was to come, so I think it was a very important sacrifice in my journey. I'm so grateful that I've been able to make so many connections in different places, so even though I'm away from home I feel like I have family."

For the first time in her career, Smith is about to begin a second season at the same club having settled into life at Arsenal.

"When I stepped into the building for my second pre-season it just felt surreal. It feels like home. It feels like Arsenal's the place that's meant to be," said Smith. "It's an honour to be here. I'm just super excited to see where it takes me. I've always wanted to be somewhere for more than a year; I've moved around so much.

"I also knew there was so much more for me and I wanted to be the best that I could be. All those moves led me here."

Smith's ambitions have not changed. At the age of six or seven, she wrote down in a journal what she wanted to achieve.

"I had a journal with everything in it that I wanted to accomplish and what I wanted to do: I want to win the Ballon d'Or. I want to win the World Cup," she added. "That's still the case today. I want to win trophies with [Arsenal]. I've had this mentality since I was young. It is what has driven me this far."

Alex Scott meets Olivia Smith to Eat & Yap about Canada, Jamaica and more.