Ollie Watkins #19

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Scored the last-minute goal that sent England to the Euro 2024 final. “I don’t think I’ve hit a ball that sweet before.” He said it felt surreal for someone who, a few years earlier, had been struggling to get into Exeter’s side in League Two. “I never imagined it. Obviously you can dream but I’m a realist.” His pre-match routine involves music: “The closer it gets to kick-off, I like to listen to heavier hip-hop, so 50 Cent and his old school Get Rich or Die Tryin' album or Rick Ross – something like that.” But he chose to sing Never Too Much by Luther Vandross as his initiation song when signing for Villa. Gets his love of music from his mum, Delsi-May, a professional singer, who told the Times in 2021 how she first spotted Ollie’s football potential by the seaside at home in Torquay. “We used to take the kids out, and there was a little machine where you put a 2p in, and a little rubber ball fell out. He’d stand there and you’d drop it, and he’d kick it. He never used to miss. He was only nine months old.”

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