Alphonso Davies is off to Bayern Munich. Here’s why he’s Canada’s most important soccer player

By: Cathal Kelly | The Globe & Mail |

The previous time the greatest-ever Canadian soccer player left for Europe, no one noticed.

Calgary’s Owen Hargreaves was 16 years old when scouts from German giant Bayern Munich hoovered him up into their youth system. They were well ahead of Canada in that regard.

Few media outlets noted the move, and none did any more than brief it. It was 1997 and putting the words “soccer” and “Canada” into the same sentence qualified as a narcotic-level sleep aid.

Once he was a big deal, Canada’s national teams wanted in on the Hargreaves business. Nursing a series of grievances against various levels of the Canadian setup, Hargreaves and his family began a years-long campaign of avoidance.

First, the teenager agreed to play internationally for Wales (through his mother). Eventually, he switched to England (through his father).

In the end, Hargreaves’s career flared like a struck match. For just a moment – during the 2006 World Cup and its immediate aftermath – he was regarded as one of the better players in the world. But injuries undid him early.

Hargreaves never did play for the country he was raised in and was never given any reason to regret it. If he was our great missed opportunity, we were hardly his.

Twenty years later, the country gets its chance to redo the Hargreaves mess with Alphonso Davies.

On Wednesday, Davies finalized a move to Hargreaves’s alma mater in Munich. A Liberian by way of Ghana and Edmonton, the 17-year-old entered the Vancouver Whitecaps youth system three years ago. He is a raw and remarkable talent.

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