Ollie Watkins was born on 30 December 1995 in Torquay, Devon, England. He came through the youth setup at Exeter City before Brentford signed him for around £1.8 million in 2017, where he evolved from a wide attacker into a centre-forward and scored 26 goals in the 2019-20 Championship season — one of the best individual scoring campaigns in the division for a generation. Aston Villa paid approximately £28 million for him in September 2020 as part of their Premier League rebuild.
At Aston Villa he has been one of the Premier League's most consistently productive centre-forwards since his arrival, developing further under each successive manager — Dean Smith, Steven Gerrard and decisively Unai Emery — into a complete modern number nine. His combination of intelligent movement, pressing, link play and goal threat made him central to Villa's Europa League and Champions League qualification campaigns.
He scored one of the most celebrated goals in recent England history: a dramatic 90th-minute winner against the Netherlands in the Euro 2024 semi-final in Dortmund to send England to the final. The goal confirmed his status as one of English football's most valued forward options and an automatic starter when fit.
For England he debuted in November 2020 under Gareth Southgate and became a regular in the squad. He was part of the Euro 2020 finalist squad and Euro 2024 finalist squad, and has continued under Thomas Tuchel for the 2026 World Cup qualifying campaign as a leading forward option.
Standing 1.80 m, Watkins is a right-footed centre-forward whose intelligent movement — particularly third-man runs and timing of arrival in the box — combined with his pressing engine and versatility in attack draw comparisons with a more aerially proficient Robbie Fowler and, in his work rate, a modern Emile Heskey with the goal threat Heskey's partnership with Owen provided redistributed into a single player.