Alphonso Davies confirmed to play Sunday for Canada, but will-he-or-won't-he saga still raises questions

For the indorse sequentially domain transfuse, thither have been questions about Alphonso Davies, arguably the best player Canada has produced, and his contributions to the men’s team. The difference this time around is that he hasn’t played a minute.

On Saturday, Davies spoke to reporters for the first time since the World Cup began, appearing at a press conference in Los Angeles Stadium alongside head coach Jesse Marsch. Canada will face South Africa in the Round of 32’s opening match on Sunday.

“Obviously, it was painful,” Davies said about missing the entire group stage in a home World Cup. “The only thing you want to do is play football.”

Canada coach Marsch pledges aggressive start against South Africa on Sunday

He’s apparently returned to form just in time for the knockout rounds.

“Now that we have Alphonso back and healthy and ready to perform, I think it’s a big moment for the team,” Marsch said.

Before last Wednesday’s loss to Switzerland, a reporter asked Marsch what she called “the requisite Alphonso Davies question,” because the star left back’s prolonged recovery from a series of hamstring and muscle strains had become a major subplot in Canada’s historic campaign.

“He’s trained with the team all week,” Marsch said. “He will not start, but he will be available to play.”

After a narrow 2-1 defeat, Marsch said that he’d lied, using Davies as a “decoy” to waste Swiss time and attention.

Had Canada’s men won or drawn the match, they would have topped their group and made their first World Cup knockout-round appearance in Vancouver next week. Instead, they finished second and headed to Los Angeles. About 4,000 Canadian fans have bought tickets through Canada Soccer for the match.  

On Saturday, Marsch confirmed that he’d been lying to reporters, and so to fans, about Davies and his status, and had no intention of playing him before the elimination games. 

“We were fairly certain early on that playing in the group phase was unlikely,” Marsch said.

Canada captain Davies used as decoy as he wasn't ready to play in World Cup Wednesday

Canada finishes 2nd in Group B after 2-1 loss to Switzerland, will play South Africa in knockout game Sunday

Davies, Canada’s captain, tore his ACL with the national team in March 2025 and hasn’t played for it since. He returned to play with Bayern Munich, his club side, in December, but he suffered three muscle and hamstring strains in short order, the latest on May 6.

The timeline for his return was set at four to six weeks, potentially in time for some of the group stage and perhaps all of it.

In 2022, Davies scored Canada’s first men’s World Cup goal in a 4-1 loss to Croatia. He also missed a penalty he shouldn’t have taken in a loss to Belgium and played a maddening brand of hero ball in another loss to Morocco.

He remains a remarkable talent, and Marsch had waited to the last moment to submit his roster, finally deciding that Davies’s possible impact outweighed the lower-ceilinged certainty provided by Ralph Priso and Zorhan Bassong. They were cut after attending Canada’s pre-tournament training camp in Charlotte.

Canada advances to knockout round despite 2-1 loss to Switzerland

Davies had skipped it to continue his treatment in Munich. (“We need to get Alphonso here,” Marsch said at the time, a little impatiently.)

Davies joined the team for Canada’s final two friendlies but did not play in either. Marsch eventually conceded that he wouldn’t be ready for the opener against Bosnia-Herzegovina on June 12.

Marsch did offer significant hope in the form of an MRI taken two days earlier. It showed that Davies was “healing incredibly well, almost completely,” he said.

In retrospect, that might not have been true, but it also seems like an oddly specific detail to manufacture. 

Rather than rely on Canada Soccer’s medical staff, Davies has continued his healing under the watchful eye of Matthias Blankenburg, a personal trainer he’s imported from Germany. Blankenburg has worn Canada’s colours at training and is allegedly independent, but it seems unlikely that Davies hired him without Bayern’s approval, if not influence.

When Marsch and Davies spoke before Saturday’s training session, Blankenburg, a formidable figure, stood between them.

Davies tore his ACL only weeks into a massive new contract with the German giants, worth about $190 million. Club executives threatened to sue Canada Soccer, and Nedal Huoseh, Davies’s agent, accused Marsch of pressuring his client to play when he “was not 100 per cent.”

Cooler heads prevailed, but Bayern reportedly put considerable pressure on Davies to take this summer off to cement his recovery, with club sources whispering to German tabloids that they might sell Davies rather than risk keeping a depreciating asset.

Both Marsch and Davies said on Saturday that Canada and Bayern have worked in tandem to return Davies to fitness. “There’s been good communication on both sides,” Davies said, “and open communication.”

For the meticulous Jesse Marsch, preparing Canada for the World Cup is the ultimate build

On Friday, the club reached an agreement to sign Nathaniel Brown, Germany’s emergent 23-year-old left back, from Eintracht Frankfurt for about $90 million. Bayern was apparently serious about its not-so-veiled threats to Davies, who must have suffered under the burden of an unwinnable choice between club and country, even while Marsch claimed the choice is his.

“We’ve worked together for what we think is best for Alphonso,” Marsch said. That now seems to have included a tacit agreement not to play him during the group stage.

Before Canada’s second match against Qatar on June 18 — a day after Davies’s six-week recovery window had closed — Marsch said for the first time that he was available. “We’ll see how the match goes and make a decision as to how we will choose to use him,” he said.

The game turned into a 6-0 rout, and Davies did not feature. That made sense: Why risk playing him in a game that had already been decided?

The Switzerland game was different.

Marsch has built a reputation for radical honesty, at least by soccer’s measures, and when he said Davies was again available, many took him at his word. It helped that Davies looked healthy in training, running freely and leathering balls into the net.

The game’s dying minutes also seemed like the perfect opportunity for Davies to reassert his influence. Canada had trailed 2-0, but Promise David scored a gorgeous goal in the 76th minute to put a fate-turning draw within reach.

Davies asked to play, Marsch said, but did not because he had not reached the required fitness benchmarks, although Marsch didn’t specify who required them.

“Especially with the highest-level athletes, you have to treat them like they are Ferraris,” Marsch said on Saturday. “I want him to go out on the pitch and be free.” 

A German reporter asked whether Davies would start against South Africa, and Davies looked confused by the question. “Start?” he asked back, as though it were impossible.

“I’m not confirming any minutes, starts, subs,” Marsch said. “He’s available to play tomorrow.”

That could be more subterfuge, of course, to use a kinder word for it. He’s said that before two other games, and it wasn’t true. 

But if Davies is, in fact, fit enough to play Sunday, it will raise a “requisite” question: Then why wasn’t he fit enough to play two days ago in another game that mattered, especially to the tens of thousands of fans with tickets in Vancouver?

If he stays on the bench — if he’s not ready to play in the first knockout game in the history of the country that he captains — it will raise another: Why is he on the team at all?

Senior Contributor

Chris Jones is a journalist and screenwriter who began his career covering baseball and boxing for the National Post. He later joined Esquire magazine, where he won two National Magazine Awards for his feature writing. His memoir, Legs Hearts Minds: Loss and Its Remedies, will be published by Random House in June.

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