But after more than a decade at the top of the game that has also seen her battle injuries and alcoholism, Smith is facing another fight to be fit for a home Olympic Games.
It would be a fitting climax to the career of a standard-bearer for women’s football in the UK, but the player herself refuses to accept she is anything special.
“It’s funny when you say that,” Smith laughs.
“I just play football. I’ve played football all my life. There have been accolades and achievements within the game but I don’t see myself as that at all.”
Smith’s passion for the sport began at the age of six, in the school playground with the boys, jumpers on the ground as goal posts in time-honoured fashion.
Growing up in Watford, Hertfordshire, with her parents and younger brother during the mid-1980s, it was a time when a girl with footballing ability was perceived as odd.
Cutting her hair short and joining a local boys’ league, Smith was better than the majority of the boys she played against, which led to complaints from disgruntled parents who didn’t want a girl showing up their sons.
Undeterred, she simply found a girls’ team to play in.
“I always wanted to have a ball at my feet, it was always in my blood. I loved to play and I was kind of good at it,” Smith recalls.
“Both my parents were supportive but I don’t think my mum was too happy at first. She wanted me to be a ballerina or a dancer or something, but she could see that I enjoyed it.”
So much so that Smith became a different person when she was playing. Naturally reserved and one of the quieter personalities off the pitch, Smith was anything but when she crossed the white line.
“I’m not really outgoing,” she admits. “It’s just my personality and how I am. But on the pitch I’m a different kind of character – very confident, hungry for success, will do anything to win. Kind of a Jekyll and Hyde.”