Alphonso Davies is having a moment. He’s having a moment at the age of 19, and in the process revealing himself as the Canadian athlete we – all of us – need right now.
Tuesday was about the best day sports fans in Canada have enjoyed since leagues shut down due to the pandemic. It wasn’t enough to make you want to riot in the streets, but at least at our place it sure seemed as if that really was the sun shining out there.
The NHL became the first major North American sports league to put some meat on the bones of a potential return. And while that won’t make things easier on the people doing the angels work in fighting COVID-19 or those who are dealing with other real-world realities at this time – I’ll spare you the pep talk about sports coming back if you’ll also spare me – it was pleasantly surprising to see our national sport apparently unified in positioning itself to be treated the same as any other business that is trying to re-open. On this continent, it was the biggest and greenest of green shoots.
NHL commissioner Gary Bettman made the announcement roughly two hours after Davies and Bayern Munich turned in a 1-0 win over Borussia Dortmund in a match that effectively gives Bayern the Bundesliga title, increasing their lead to seven points atop Germany’s top soccer league – the highest-profile league to successfully resume during the pandemic.
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Bayern is one of the soccer world’s Cadillac brands even when all the European leagues are up and running, and Davies had marked himself as a big deal even before the pandemic, flourishing as a kind of hybrid wingback/winger in his second year after joining Bayern from the Vancouver Whitecaps. Davies is one of those rare players in any sport whose breathtaking ability to put himself in the middle of any action shot is backed up by his under-lying statistics; one of those players whose numbers reinforce the mind’s eye.
His performance Tuesday led his teammate Thomas Müller – whose first, second and third-favourite players are Me, Myself and I – to laud Davies’ pace for the second time in a month. This just doesn’t happen with Thomas Müller.
During the match, Inter Milan striker Romelu Lukaku tweeted "Alphonso Davies is fast as f***".
Later, Lukaku called him a "cheatcode," and is there anything else a 19-year-old gamer would rather be called?
Last weekend, FOX soccer analyst Alexi Lalas intoned that Davies in the "best player in CONCACAF," which covers Mexico, too. Fighting words, amigo! Davies agreed to a five-year extension with Bayern just after the pandemic hit, but this is soccer: the ink wasn’t even dry before there were reports Real Madrid were interested. He has already been called the best left-back in the world.
He’s 19.
Canada has produced soccer players who have had distinguished professional careers – players such as Craig Forrest, Paul Stalteri, Atiba Hutchinson and Owen Hargreaves, who was born in Calgary but had a choice of three countries because his parents were Welsh and English. He chose England and had a distinguished career, but he didn’t wear the maple leaf in major international tournaments.
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What makes Davies so special at this time is his back story. Davies was born in a refugee camp in Ghana to parents who fled civil war in their native Liberia. The family then moved to Edmonton. His initial foray into organized sports is owed to an organization that Sportsnet colleague Mark Spector is heavily involved with: Sport Central, which supplies almost 10,000 kids per year with free sports equipment and a bike. Both Alphonso and his brother received bikes … and soccer balls.
This country has a much different texture to it than “back in the day.” Hockey has priced itself out of the range of all but the most comfortable middle-class families. It is no longer a story of frozen ponds; it is a story of 365 days a year training and thousands of dollars poured into this private school and that private school, and great gobs of money for transportation and such. The minor hockey eco-system became a for-profit business years ago.
But it’s not just economics that have driven athletes into other pastimes, to the point where soccer and basketball are the true growth sports in Canada, because there is also an economic price to be paid if an athlete advances in either of those sports. Vince Carter, Steve Nash and the Toronto Raptors have made hoops a “thing.” Women’s soccer has been blessed by Christine Sinclair, and a national team chock full of personalities and a new group of young stars that continues to make its mark in the post-John Herdman era.
Canadian men’s soccer hasn’t really had that transcendent personality, let alone moment. Indeed, you can argue that if it wasn’t for Davies, the dominant personality would be Herdman, who has now taken the reins. In truth, the men’s national program has spent much of its existence getting in its own way, beset by regional bickering and a lack of central planning that for the longest time served to effectively stunt advancement.
I remember Herdman talking one time about the difficulty of managing a national program in a country as broad as Canada – the idea that he was missing out on finding the next Christine Sinclair just because the country is so spread out that a player could fall through the cracks at the age of 14 or 15. What if that player isn’t being raised in soccer hotbeds such as the lower mainland of B.C. or the Greater Toronto Area? What if somewhere in Glace Bay or St. John’s or The Pas, there’s a kid with a ball, a dream, talent to burn and nowhere to go?
This in large measure is why Alphonso Davies is the athlete we need right now and why this moment – his moment – should matter to all of us. We will come out of this pandemic at some point and when we do it simply won’t be enough to focus on the return of the NHL or NBA or Major League Baseball. This has been an economic virus, and it’s changed the way a lot of Canadians are going to be spending disposable income for years to come and that can’t help but have an impact on minor sports.
The old rules will need changing – and while we’re here, credit to Chief Operating Officer Scott Smith and the people at Hockey Canada for spending as much time as they have developing grass-roots financial models for minor-hockey organizations to help them come out of this, for talking about perhaps increasing a focus on local skills development as opposed to games or tournament travel this winter, while also admitting that, at least initially, their emphasis might have to be on retaining kids instead of bringing new kids aboard.
At a time like this, it’s nice to be reminded of the importance of a ball and bike. Not that Davies has done this on his own: his career path so far has been marked by intelligent decision-making, going to a league like the Bundesliga that takes a less parochial approach to developing young player, a league that, as Lalas says, not only likes playing young players "but likes watching them, too."
This has allowed Phonzie – he’s on a one-name basis with soccer people around the world, so we might as well jump on board – to blossom as a player, possibly even creating a new position, and blossom as a person. He is a joy to watch on the pitch, and on social media, and is a favourite among his teammates, shedding what was a natural shyness the way he sheds opponents.
Canadian men’s soccer won’t likely have its moment until the country co-hosts the World Cup in 2026 at which time Davies will be … 25? My god, these are halcyon days for Canadian sports and, in particular, young Canadian athletes. Connor McDavid. Bianca Andreescu. Penny Oleksiak. Alphonso Davies. Tell you what: voting for the Lou Marsh Trophy as Canada’s athlete of the year is going to be a helluva thing this next decade.
A boy gets a ball and a bike in Edmonton. He becomes one of the most talked-about players in the most talked-about sport in the world. While the rest of us are trying to figure our way out of something we never imagined, Alphonso Davies has been given his moment. The only league playing. A new contract. A mid-season coaching change that brought in a new man, Hansi Flick, who gave him the keys to the car and said: “Keep the damage to just a few dents, yeah?”
Right now, he is the athlete we need. He is the story we need.
