INGLEWOOD — In the 75th minute of Round of 32 match going nowhere, Canada defender Alphonso Davies stepped onto the SoFi Stadium pitch, into the World Cup for the first time this tournament, leaned down and touched the turf and then made the sign of a cross, many of his 41 million countrymen, those in the stadium Sunday afternoon, those watching at home from joining him in response to their answered prayers.
“Thank you God.’”
“Merci mon Dieu.”
Davies didn’t score. He played less than 20 minutes, including stoppage time. But he was the difference in a historic 1-0 victory that gave Canada its first ever World Cup knockout stage win and a Round of 16 match-up with the Netherlands or Morocco in Houston Saturday.
“You guys are Canadian heroes!” Canada’s U.S. born coach Jesse Marsch told the team afterward. “Canadian heroes for the future children of this country who play this sport. This sport has a big future because of you guys. You should be so proud of who you are. You should be so proud of this game.”
Davies is not only a reflection of his sport’s future but, as the son of Liberian refugees fleeing a bloody civil war, also reflects an increasingly diverse nation.
Davies, the Bayern Munich standout, is not only Canada’s best player; he is one of the best left backs in the world, the premier player in the North and Central America and Caribbean region. He has also been plagued by injury, the most recent ailment a pulled left hamstring suffered in a Bayern’s UEFA Champions League semifinal against Paris Saint-Germain May 6. The injury kept Davies out of all three of Canada’s first-round World Cup matches, including a 2-1 loss to Switzerland last week that relegated Canada to second place in Group B and cost it the opportunity to play its Round of 32 match at home in Vancouver.
Davies’ injury just seemed to be the latest blow in a bad year in a series of bad years for Canada, already belittled as the “51st state” by President Trump, a sort of bilingual Greenland.
The beloved Canadian actress Catherine O’Hara died in January. A month later, Team Canada lost in sudden-death overtime to a brash U.S. team in the men’s Olympic ice hockey final. The Montreal Canadiens raised the nation’s hopes of ending the country’s 33-year Stanley Cup drought only to lose to a very non-Original Six team in the American Sun Belt, Carolina, in the Cup semifinals. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation recently announced it will no longer broadcast “Hockey Night In Canada,” the country’s national campfire since the 1950s, disappearing just as two other Canadian institutions, Eatons and Hudson’s Bay, had earlier this century. The cost of hosting this World Cup with the U.S. and Mexico will cost the Canadian taxpayer billions.
Thirty-five mills have closed in British Columbia this year. A record number of Canadians are relying on food banks.
Things are so bad north of the border that Alberta is seriously considering bolting.
In an October 19 referendum, Albertans will vote on the question: “Should Alberta remain a province of Canada or should the Government of Alberta commence the legal process required under the Canadian Constitution to hold a binding provincial referendum on whether or not Alberta should separate from Canada?”As of Sunday, however, Alberta was still one of the provinces, another reason for Canadians to give thanks.
Davies was born to Liberian parents in Buduburam, a refugee camp set up in Ghana by the United Nations Commission for Refugees. Debean and Victoria Davies were fleeing the four-year Second Liberian Civil War that left 50,000 dead and saw the widespread use of child soldiers.
Davies was 5 when the family immigrated to Canada, first to Windsor, Ontario, and then to Alberta. It was in Edmonton that Davies first began developing into the best CONCACAF player since Rafael Marquez anchored the backline for Mexico and Barcelona more than a decade ago. He was just 14 when he signed with Major League Soccer’s Vancouver Whitecaps in 2015. A year later, he made his MLS debut. He was sold to Bayern in the summer of 2018 for an MLS record transfer fee of $13 million.
Davies’ impact Sunday was felt almost immediately.
“When Alfonso comes in, I know it’s a big boost for the team. Obviously he’s one of the best players, one of the best lead backs in the world, the best player we have on our team,” said Canada forward Stephen Eustáquio.
It wasn’t just the emotional boost that Davies gave Canada. It was how he lifted the match to another level, how he opened it up.
He was barely on the pitch a minute when he sent a 40-yard surgical pass that created one of the game’s best scoring opportunities. Three minutes later, he deftly threaded a pass through a series of South Africa defenders to create another prime scoring opportunity.
From then on, it wasn’t a matter of if Canada would score but when.
Two minutes into stoppage time, Eustaquio, who plays for LAFC in MLS, struck a volley from a step outside the 18-yard box into the back of the net.
For generations of Canadians, the country’s “I’ll never forget where I was,” JFK-type moment came on a Thursday, September 28, 1972, at 11:26 a.m. in Vancouver, 2:26 in the afternoon on Toronto’s Yonge Street, 3:56 in the afternoon in Newfoundland.
With 34 seconds left in the third period of the eighth and final game of the Summit Series between Canada and the Soviet Union at Moscow’s Luzhniki Sport Palace, the score, 5-5, and series, 3-3-1, tied, the clock winding down on what had become a referendum on the Canadian identity and way of life, Team Canada’s Paul Henderson scored.
CBC announcer Foster Hewitt’s call of “Henderson has scored for Canada” still echoes through the decades.
So will that moment Sunday afternoon.
“It is a strange feeling and not dissimilar to what all the fans of my Canadians felt back home and in the stands, and probably what you felt as well,” Canada right back Alistair Johnston said. “It’s just a moment of magic, and something just comes over your body, you see Steph sprinting away, and just the whole team sprinting. It’s, it’s one of those moments that you’ll never forget where you were.
“And look, I think for Canadian sports history, it’s going to be a moment where you’re going to kind of know where you were when that moment happened.
“So that’s something that is not lost on us. We know that, you know, not only is this not only writing history in Canadian soccer, but in Canadian sport, and that’s something that you know is something that’s really, it’s a magical, magical thing when you think about it.”