MONTREAL – Alphonso Davies can still remember how it felt in the beginning.
The greatest male soccer player in Canadian history looked around timidly at teammates he had never met before. Those same teammates already knew that this 16-year-old was capable of outlandish speed and a level of creativity that was beyond them and that he could matter more to Canada’s national team program than anyone who had come before him.
Montreal will always hold a place in Davies’ heart.
It was here that, in June 2017, a fresh-faced Davies became Canada’s youngest senior player, coming on as a second-half substitute in a friendly against Curacao. Davies had been born in Ghana and came to Canada as a refugee at five years old. He had only taken his Oath of Citizenship, swearing allegiance to the Canadian constitution and becoming a citizen, a week before the match.
Davies was like a young horse let out of the barn doors, and Curacao didn’t have a clue how to contain him. There was a dynamism to his play that was unique for Canada. He drew a penalty and turned the game on its head.
But that debut weighed heavily on his young shoulders.
“That game was nerve-racking,” Davies, now 23, tells The Athletic. “I was a really shy kid. I remember standing on the sideline and (Octavio Zambrano, Canada’s head coach at the time) telling me just to be myself. Playing for your country is a different feeling than playing for your club.”
Alphonso Davies debut v. Curaçao💫
🇨🇦 2-1 🇨🇼 June 13, 2017
At the age of 16 years 7 months and 11 days, Davies becomes the youngest player in #CANMNT history. He would draw a penalty late in the match that would lead to the winner.#WeCAN pic.twitter.com/37BlgrEnOD
— Canada Soccer (@CanadaSoccerEN) March 25, 2023
Davies has since scored some of the most important goals in Canada’s history, including their first at a men’s World Cup, and is the most recognizable soccer player in the country. It hasn’t always been easy for him, but the Bayern Munich left-back finds himself in the most important role of his career: Canada captain with a World Cup to be played at home in less than two years.
Davies at national team training (Canada Soccer)
As he returns to the city where he made his debut for Canada, Davies opened up to The Athletic in a rare interview about his life, career and journey from naive teenager to trying to become the kind of leader who could change how Canadians look at his sport.
Davies didn’t get to pick his first national team roommate, but he’s happy with who the team assigned to keep an eye on him: one of Montreal’s soccer legends, Patrice Bernier. “He made me feel very comfortable, and (told me) if I just played my game, everything was going to be OK,” Davies says.
Davies learned about what national team duty required. As captain, Davies hopes to pass some of those lessons on. I learned about the importance of being positive from him,” Davies says of Bernier.
And not sleeping in… Davies remembers Bernier coming back from breakfast once to find the teenager still asleep. “I had to change my ways,” Davies says with a grin.
Not that he doesn’t still enjoy the odd snooze. Midway through our conversation, at 11.15am, the alarm on his phone goes off with a reminder. He blushes as he turns it off. “I was planning on going back for a nap,” he says sheepishly. “It takes a lot of energy to run around on the pitch!”
Davies has never been short on that. He ran circles around the opposition as he graduated from the Vancouver Whitecaps to Bayern in January 2019, a landmark transfer for a Canadian player. All along, his role with the national team heightened.
He scored to give Canada their first competitive win over the United States in 34 years in a 2019 Nations League qualifier, and that was when he truly arrived.
Canada’s coach at the time, John Herdman, tried to shield the 18-year-old Davies from the hype. “Just let ‘Phonzie’ enjoy his football,” Herdman said after that goal. “We don’t need to put him up in lights.”
But Davies’ talent won out. Only months after turning 21 and becoming old enough to legally buy alcohol in Canada, he became unignorable with some electrifying performances in the Champions League for Bayern.
Davies hurdles a challenge from Chelsea’s Andreas Christensen in February 2020 (Rob Newell – CameraSport via Getty Images)
His rise in Canada has not always been straightforward, though. He missed seven games in the final round of qualifying for the 2022 World Cup due to a knee injury and then a bout of myocarditis (heart inflammation). Before one of those matches, he posted on Instagram a photo with the caption: “They won’t realize how big a part you play until you’re not there to play it anymore.” It caused a stir in Canadian soccer and Davies eventually clarified he meant no ill will towards the national team.
At the World Cup, Davies experienced the polar highs and lows of stardom. He opened the scoring against Croatia in the second group-stage game, solidifying him as a household name back home, but he repeatedly turned down opportunities to speak to Canadian media while other stars, such as Argentina captain Lionel Messi, were happy to talk. He later said he didn’t want to take the focus away from his team.
Davies cut a despondent figure at his only press conference in Qatar, leading one Canadian reporter to ask if he was even having fun being at the World Cup. “Yes,” he replied, smiling for the first time in that media session. “You dream about this ever since you’re young.”
All along, Davies felt caught: he didn’t want to be seen as different from his teammates. “I don’t think anyone is ready to be the face of the national team,” he says. But his talent does make him different. He came to understand that, perhaps ironically, at his lowest point in a Canada shirt — the Nations League final in June 2023.
It was Canada’s first final in a generation and they were outclassed tactically by the United States. The Canadians didn’t look up to the task — they lost duels and didn’t show any of the pace and quality that were hallmarks in World Cup qualifying.
That night was the beginning of the end of Herdman’s tenure as coach, but in a dinner with teammates after the game, Davies fronted up. The man once content to stay quiet at the back of the dressing room spoke with newfound brutal honesty. The team that had been darlings of the nation through 2021 and 2022 had come crashing back to Earth.
New emotions emerged and anger was the most prominent. Davies expressed this to his teammates. For the first time, he sounded ready to take ownership of the Canada team.
“As I stood there and I saw the U.S. lift the trophy and get their medals, that was very hard,” Davies says. “It was a switch in our minds where we said, ‘If we want to win a trophy, we have to change something’. And I think everyone changed our mentality from that point.
“We all looked at each other and said, ‘We have to do more. We have to fight more’.”
That was the night Davies realized he had to change his role with Canada as well.
He felt that if this team was going to win a trophy, he had to play a more pivotal role. He found himself speaking up in a way he hadn’t in the past. The team was still riddled with veteran players to whom Herdman stayed too loyal for too long. Davies had almost singlehandedly propelled Canada past Panama in the semifinals.
Less than a year later, Jesse Marsch arrived to push Canada — physically, emotionally and tactically — to new heights.
“Jesse coming in, he has implemented that winning mindset in the team, that fight that we desperately needed,” Davies says of the team’s American coach.
Davies and Marsch after beating Venezuela on penalties in the Copa America (Canada Soccer)
To do that, Marsch needed Davies to elevate his presence around the team. Naming Davies captain before Copa America this summer was one of Marsch’s most important decisions.
When Davies told his parents, his father, Debeah, was elated. His mother, Victoria, well… not so much. It’s not as if she didn’t want him to wear the armband. It’s just that she has other priorities when thinking about her son. Before every game, she always says the same thing to him: “Be safe.”
“She doesn’t want to see her little boy get hurt,” Davies says.
His family’s humility has been at the heart of Davies’ early tenure as captain. He is trying to do what comes naturally: listen first and then let his soccer do the talking. “I don’t want to boss people around. That’s not me. I don’t like to tell people what to do,” Davies says.
He has spent the early months of this season with Bayern looking for inspiration on how to be a captain, and has picked the brains of club teammates Manuel Neuer and Joshua Kimmich, leaders at Bayern and for Germany’s national team with different styles. Davies will quietly observe how the two interact with their colleagues, make mental notes and then subtly bring up those two players’ decisions with them afterwards.
“Kimmich is very intense,” Davies says. “But he brings life into the team. On the pitch, he keeps you on your toes. Neuer is more calm. He might say one or two words, but it’s his aura, his presence.”
Davies, centre, and Kimmich, left, celebrate Bayern sealing the 2023 Bundesliga title (Stefan Brauer/DeFodi Images via Getty Images)
Davies has yet to seek input from longtime Manchester City captain and now Bayern manager Vincent Kompany on how to be a captain, but he has quickly become a fan of the Belgian and his approach.
“He is a very brilliant guy. The way that we’re playing now is very intense,” Davies says. “He picks the best team and the best players to put on the team that train well. Every training session is a battle for the starting spot. Nothing is guaranteed. The way he talks to the team, he is polite but firm. He has ideas and we’re executing them well.”
Davies cuts a more serious figure now. After training sessions in Montreal, you’re more likely to see him offering subtle encouragement to teammates practicing their crossing and finishing than joking around.
“I pride myself in seeing everyone as equal,” he says. “I don’t want to take superiority over anybody. I don’t want players to shy away from me. I want them to be comfortable around me.”
He is working on building team morale, too. During Canada’s run to the Copa America semi-finals, where they lost to eventual champions Argentina, Davies urged his teammates out of their hotel rooms to engage in the latest craze in the camp: the card game Mafia. The players come out of their shells as they try to make assumptions about teammates, some of whom they are only just getting to know.
Davies’ longtime Canada teammate, Liam Millar, introduced the game, which was also popular with England players at this summer’s European Championship, to Canada’s group, but it was the captain who turned the activity from including just a handful of players to most of the team.
His influence on the squad is showing. The atmosphere in their Montreal camp was the loosest and most upbeat in years.
“You can tell the players respect him. They love him, as the whole nation does,” 19-year-old Jamie Knight-Lebel, who is in his first Canada camp, tells The Athletic.
As captain, Davies has realized he has to share more of himself than ever before — because there is more to him than the story often told.
Did you know Davies loves documentaries and reality TV? Can’t get enough of the stuff. He’s deep into the Netflix series Outlast now, which features people fending for themselves in the Alaskan wilderness. When he’s finished, he’ll probably go darker. “I don’t want to sound like a crazy person, but I like a lot of murder mysteries,” he says with a wide grin.
Next: if you want to find Davies walking the streets of Munich, you might be wise to linger outside the sneaker shops. He is an unabashed sneakerhead.
Guess how many pairs Davies packed for this week-and-half-long trip, where he’ll spend most of his time in football boots or flip-flops.
“I only brought… five pairs,” he says, before giggling. “Normally it’s more.”
His most prized pair? His Jordan 11 Lows. “I try to keep my shoes in rotation. I try not to bring the same pairs on different trips,” he says.
Above his sneakers at home in Munich, you might find some framed jerseys. One is prized among the rest. Davies swapped shirts with Messi during Copa America. But who is the player who surprised him with a request for his shirt?
During the 2022-23 Champions League’s round of 16, the then-Paris Saint-Germain forward Neymar, a superstar in his native Brazil and beyond, approached Davies mid-game to swap shirts. “I was shocked,” he says. “I said, ‘Really?’.”
There was a time when Davies could get away with being surprised by the attention he receives. But that has come and gone. He has wanted to take Canada to the next stage of their evolution. That could happen when they play on home soil in the 2026 World Cup, when Davies will be the unequivocal face of Canada, which is co-hosting the tournament with the U.S. and Mexico.
Years ago, his first Canada coach told him to be himself when playing for the national team. Finally, he feels comfortable.
“I’m not a captain who tells you what to do,” Davies says. “I can give players advice but I just want the team to be comfortable around each other. The best thing you can do for a player is give him that confidence and freedom to do what he needs to do on the pitch to help the team.”
(Top photo: Ethan Miller/Getty Images)
