2 hours ago. The Football Interview is a new series in which the biggest names in sport and entertainment join host Kelly Somers for bold and in-depth conversations about the nation’s favourite sport.. We’ll explore mindset and motivation, and talk about defining moments, career highs and personal reflections. The Football Interview brings you the person behind the player.. Interviews will drop on weekends across BBC iPlayer, YouTube, BBC Sounds and the BBC Sport website. This week’s interview will be broadcast on BBC One from 23:35 BST on Saturday, 11 April (and after Sportscene in Scotland) .. Ollie Watkins’ journey to the top has been a circuitous one – from playing in the National League with Weston-super-Mare to scoring the winner in a European Championship semi-final almost a decade later, then competing in the Champions League with Aston Villa.. This season has been a mixed one for Watkins.. A tally of nine goals and just one assist from 30 Premier League appearances is below his usual rate, but having scored against West Ham before the international break, he then hit two against Bologna in the Europa League on Thursday.. That took him to 99 goals for Villa and prompted renewed talk of a late run into Thomas Tuchel’s World Cup squad.. He talks to Kelly Somers about Villa, his international ambitions, and how talking to former England striker Michael Owen has helped him through what he describes as a “difficult” season.. Kelly Somers: Well, Ollie, let’s go back to the very beginning. I want to know where your love of football came from and the first time you can remember having a ball at your feet.. Ollie Watkins: Ah, it was a long time ago now!. Kelly: You were so young that you can’t remember…. Ollie: Yeah, I was so young. My mum always used to say as soon as I could walk I was kicking bouncy balls and stuff around. Then whenever I used to go out to play in the street, I’d always come back with a football.. Kelly: What, you just nicked another kid’s football?!. Ollie: I would just find footballs around and I’d have a collection of different ones. I was playing with my brothers in the street and stuff like that. One day my friend came around and he was going to football practice later, but I didn’t have a team. He told me to come with him and then it started from there.. Kelly: So, that was your first team. What can you remember of your first session with them?. Ollie: It was just different. I was used to playing football down at the park with my friends. This is a little bit more… it was still fun, but obviously you have a little bit of coaching and stuff like that. And then I found that I was quite good at it, so just kept going.. Kelly: At what point did you realise, ‘OK, I’ve maybe got something here that the other kids haven’t got’?. Ollie: Well, to be honest, there was a player that played in my team… his dad actually ran the team as well… he was the best player. And I always just wanted to kind of get close to him and just
