It is hard to comprehend the level of pride Olivia Smith’s dad, a Liverpool fan from Ontario, must have felt when he made his first visits to Anfield this season and his daughter scored three times in two games. They had been nurturing her skills together since she was three years old at a Just For Kicks session in her home town of Whitby, near Toronto.
“My dad was so invested in football. He put me into every sport, but football was the one we felt was ‘the one’,” says Smith, who was routinely playing for age-group teams that were two years up. “I didn’t fully commit to football until I was about eight or nine, as I was torn between taekwondo and football, but my dad just saw something really special in me.
