Marko Milanovic was ambling the familiar path home between grassroots pitches after his local boys team\u2019s match in 2014 when it happened: a perfect diagonal switch from the right wing from a girl no taller than his waist. And there went the then North Toronto Nitros coach\u2019s bag from his shoulder along with his obligations for the day. \u201cI stood there, watching her whole game,\u201d Milanovic, tells The Athletic.<\/p>\n
The girl: a 10-year-old Olivia Smith, who this week became the\u00a0most expensive transfer in women\u2019s football with her \u00a31million move<\/a> from Liverpool to Arsenal in the Women\u2019s Super League. Milanovic, who now leads AFC Toronto in the Northern Super League, would later coach Smith at the youth level.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n Former Florida State University women\u2019s football coach Mark Krikorian can\u2019t recall the date, but he remembers Smith. A glimpse of a video, a blur of feet and then, instant omniscience.<\/p>\n \u201cAt the earliest possible date we were allowed to by college rules, we had Olivia visit us at Florida State,\u201d he says. \u201cShe ended up coming to a camp where she blew my entire staff away by her level of play, her quality. Even at that time \u2013 and she was still quite young \u2013 I said to our staff she may end up being the most talented player we ever have.\u201d<\/p>\n And there is Joey Lombardi, then a youth development scout with Canada Soccer, who caught the Whitby-born winger flitting down the right wing sometime in 2016, slicing past a handful of opponents two years her senior, cutting inside on her left foot.<\/p>\n \u201cShe hit the ball top corner,\u201d Lombardi recalls. And before he could qualify where the 12-year-old\u2019s left foot ranked among contemporaries, Smith struck a perfect cross with her right.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n \u201cTwo-footed,\u201d he says, laughing. \u201cShe definitely caught my attention.\u201d<\/p>\n Capturing attention is something Smith has found a knack for. And that Smith is now the world\u2019s most lucrative women\u2019s signing<\/a>\u00a0is destiny\u2019s worst-kept secret. \u201cAs soon as she joined the pro game, I knew,\u201d says Milanovic. \u201cWe all knew.\u201d<\/p>\n In the past three years, she has gone from North Toronto Nitros in the semi-professional League1 Ontario, to the youngest member of Canada\u2019s 2023 Women\u2019s World Cup squad (18 years old, having already broken the record for youngest senior debutante four years earlier at 15 years and 94 days) to Sporting CP, to Liverpool as the women\u2019s team\u2019s record signing and now to Arsenal.<\/p>\n Reaching into her roots is to discover a small but ferocious girl regularly outgrowing her contexts.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n \u201cShe was playing two years up when I saw her,\u201d says Milanovic, who coached North Toronto\u2019s girls team in 2015, initially coaching against Smith before she joined his team a year later. \u201cWe man-marked her\u2026 at under-13s! We had to man-mark her. She wasn\u2019t happy about that, obviously, but that\u2019s how dominant she was at the time.\u201d<\/p>\n In her first year with Milanovic, Smith was the youngest player in a team brimming with multiple Canada youth internationals. Not that it meant anything. \u201cThat first season she scored something like 40 or 45 goals in 15 games,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n \u201cYou didn\u2019t have to be a soccer person to understand how good she was.\u201d<\/p>\n Since the beginning, those who have known Smith describe an amalgamation of grace and brawn, the instinctive swivel of hips, her ability to transform a small space into a stage of perpetual motion, aided by her taekwondo.<\/a> There was also her fury: to defend, to give chase, to win back possession. As she matured, so did her versatility. Lombardi points to her ability not only to play as a wide winger, but a No 10, a centre forward, across the front line as key to her move to Arsenal.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n \u201cHer quality on the field is very different from many,\u201d Krikorian says, who met Smith as a young teenager when she and her father, Sean, reached out for training tips. \u201cThe thing that separated her was that she really does make all of her team-mates, everyone around her, better. That\u2019s a rare quality.\u201d<\/p>\n There was also love. Smith would put herself in front of the television with her dad, watching re-runs of Brazilian Ronaldo, of Pele, of sultry dancing feet, doodling manifestations in her diary: to play for Canada, to be a Ballon d\u2019Or winner, to become a legend.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI would go to a local field to watch some games,\u201d says Lombardi. \u201cOlivia would be there, playing pickup soccer.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cShe would be so excited before games,\u201d adds Milanovic. \u201cShe would be dancing. She couldn\u2019t even wait for the game to get started.\u00a0<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n \u201cEvery time I coached the boys\u2019 teams, she\u2019d train with my teams. She always asked for more. Even later on, when she went to the National Development Centre, she would always come back, train with the boys. We worried about over-training, because she just wanted to be on the ball all the time. We had to stop her so many times, because she would play all the time.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Stopping her was easier said than done. That is not to say people didn\u2019t try. As early as six, Smith was told repeatedly by a local club that she could not play at a higher age group. In elementary school, she returned home with bruised legs and black eyes from boys refusing to let her play.<\/a><\/p>\n After Lombardi\u2019s initial Smith experience, he kept tabs on the winger, eventually bringing her into the newly-launched Ontario Development Centre in 2018, run by the Canadian Soccer Association as part of the development pathway.<\/p>\n However, after Lombardi\u2019s departure, Smith said, while speaking to <\/a>The Athletic in November, that she was suspended multiple times for soliciting additional training opportunities during the program\u2019s \u201coff season\u201d, when the coach permitted only fitness training.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n Not until Lombardi\u2019s return in 2021, when he \u201cmade it my objective to get Olivia and her family back involved\u201d did Smith return to the setup.\u00a0<\/p>\n A year later, after dissolving her initial commitment to Florida State University following Krikorian\u2019s departure, Smith committed to playing for Penn State. However, she sustained a medial cruciate ligament injury while away with Canada\u2019s under-20s, leading to her arriving in her freshman year of college with a knee brace.\u00a0<\/p>\n