Alphonso Davies, seen controlling the ball against Mexico last year, sustained a hamstring injury that threatens his World Cup participation and Canada's prospects for the tournament.Alex Gallardo/Reuters
Five weeks from the start of the biggest event this country has ever played host to, Canada’s World Cup preparations have come down to one word – “several.”
That’s how many weeks Bayern Munich said Friday that Canadian star Alphonso Davies will be sidelined with a hamstring injury.
The Canadian team responded with a chipper note on social media wishing Davies well. They also offered to provide “specialized soft-tissue expertise,” which is what exactly? Head coach Jesse Marsch sitting beside Davies’s bed as he sleeps, whispering, “Please don’t do this to us,” in his ear?
You might be thinking this is one of those modern sports deals where a guy is told he’ll be out for six months and, thanks to his Herculean work ethic, he’s back on the job by the next weekend. Except Davies, 25, is not that sort of guy.
He missed most of a year with a torn ligament suffered while playing for Canada. He returned from that layoff five months ago. Since then, he’s been hurt three more times – a muscle-fibre tear, a right hamstring injury and now the left hamstring. This poor kid is doing an epic performance of Dem Bones, with real injuries in place of the lyrics.
You know how you recover from a spate of pernicious, interconnected, work-related injuries? You stop working.
That is not what will happen, though. If he is in a hospital room somewhere wrapped up like the Invisible Man, Davies will still be named to Canada’s World Cup roster. Because to do otherwise would be admitting Canada is doomed. The only people who can stop that are Davies himself or Bayern Munich getting in his head.
That would depend on how much Davies’s reps and his German superclub believe that Canada will keep the player’s long-term health in mind. Given that all three fell to public sparring when Davies was hurt on international duty during last year’s CONCACAF Nations League, that is a novelty-sized question mark.
If Davies is ambulatory in a few weeks and Bayern agrees, Canada can play the “any day now” game. Maybe he can play in the third game of the opening round. Maybe he’ll be ready to go in the first knockout round. That’s eight weeks away. Does eight count as “several?”
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This isn’t Argentina without Lionel Messi or France without Kylian Mbappé. It’s much worse than that. Argentina and France have a bunch of players who are nearly as good as those two. Canada doesn’t have anyone anywhere close to Davies.
He is the only game-breaking star in the Canadian set-up, and the only person with deep experience in the biggest matches against the best competition. He is the only one who might reasonably be able to say that going from his club to his country lessens the pressure.
Maybe you remember Davies scoring Canada’s first goal at the last World Cup, against Croatia.
There wasn’t much to an open-field counter until Davies floated through the defence like a surfacing shark. He was 20 yards behind the play and then, all of a sudden, he was ahead of it. The Croatians didn’t have time to spot him, never mind stop him.
At this best, that’s what Davies brings to a game – something out of nothing. Something out of nothing is the most valuable skill in soccer.
Even if he can play, what are the odds that Davies will turn up at his something-out-of-nothing peak? While I have no special expertise in soft tissues, I feel comfortable guessing they are poor.
In any case, we now know what Canada’s path into the World Cup will feel like – anxiety-ridden. First, will Davies be on the team? Second, if he is, will he play? Third, if he plays, will he be anywhere close to his best?
The good news here is Canada’s opening-round group – Bosnia and Herzegovina, Qatar, Switzerland.
On paper, it is the easiest of the 12 in this World Cup. All Canada needs do in order to advance is come a battling third out of four. Even without Davies, that should be possible. No longer quite as easily so, but definitely possible.
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The bad news is everything beyond that. Who knows how far Canada thought it could get before people started tearing things? Teams live on their confidence, especially in a tournament like this one. Maybe Canada really thought it could get to the quarters. Is it possible that, tucked up in bed at night, some of the players and staff thought that if everything fell exactly right, and a lot of luck went their way, the semis were realistic?
All that is out the window now. Now you’re in a struggle to convince yourself that you can survive the first few salvos. That kind of thinking is corrosive. Lose to Bosnia in the opening match and things get seriously nervy.
It’s not going to help when every question in the lead-in is about Davies, and how’s Alphonso, and is he training, and what’s your best-case scenario for him? Whether he is or isn’t there, Davies will suck up all the oxygen in every room where a Canadian player is talking.
All of a sudden, the most important member of the Canadian team is the head coach, Marsch. His job now is convincing two dozen guys who probably don’t believe it that they’re going to be fine. Then an assortment of fringe stars – many who play in major European leagues, but not on major teams – have to have the month of their professional lives at the same time.
Canada doing anything in soccer is always a Cinderella story. It’s the one that shouldn’t against all the ones who should.
Sometimes it works out, more often not. But this is a looking like a first. To succeed in the World Cup, Canada will need to live the fairy tale without its own Cinderella on the field.