Fallout from Davies injury leaves Canada in sticky situation

It's a good thing for Canadian soccer fans that international rules don't permit disgruntled players to ask for a trade.

Alphonso Davies may not even be disgruntled, to be clear. We haven't heard the Canadian captain say anything at all on the matter of his season-ending ACL injury that came in his country's final CONCACAF Nations League game.

But we can at least be sure that, unlike, say, Kawhi Leonard and the San Antonio Spurs, the controversy over his medical treatment won't eventually lead to a divorce.

Where it does go, though, remains very much unclear.

A brief recap: Davies went down early in the third-place Nations League game against the United States on March 23 and left the pitch with what didn't appear to be a serious injury. He received treatment, returned to his club Bayern Munich for further tests, and was discovered to have an ACL tear that required surgery and could keep him out for a year.

Then all hell broke loose. His agent complained that Davies had a previous leg injury that was expected to keep him out of the U.S. game, but that his client had been "pressured" to play by the coach, Jesse Marsch. Bayern Munich officials, meanwhile, complained that Canada Soccer had been negligent in putting Davies on a "12-hour intercontinental flight without a thorough medical assessment," and implied that legal action was possible.

Uh oh.

Cooler heads have since prevailed, somewhat. The agent, Nedal Huoseh, posted that he had "positive and productive" discussions with Marsch and that everyone is aligned on helping Davies recover. Bayern Munich haven't really walked anything back, but neither have they made things worse. Davies, post-surgery, thanked his fans for their support on social media and avoided the Canada Soccer/Bayern kerfuffle entirely.

That leaves a still-potentially-uncomfortable situation. Bayern Munich are one of the biggest clubs in world football, used to getting their way. They have, in Davies, a 24-year-old star recently signed to a contract that reportedly pays him around $25 million per year. They will very much want to ensure that his recovery goes smoothly and that his long-term health is preserved.

Canada Soccer, meanwhile, will be one of the hosts of the World Cup next summer, and will absolutely want Davies, the best men's national team member ever by some distance, to be part of the preparations, even if he's unable to return to the pitch until late in the process. One of Marsch's significant changes to the Canadian setup since he took the head coach job last year was to hand Davies the captaincy and encourage him to be more of a leader and spokesman for the team.

It's not hard to see how Bayern's goals and Canada's needs may end up in conflict. And that would be made worse if Davies felt he didn't get the proper care while with the Canadian team - something, again, he hasn't said. If he declared himself fully fit and Canadian medical staff had no reason to doubt him, then sometimes bad injuries just happen, even in a game that didn't ultimately mean much. It's worth noting here that the Bayern complaint about putting him on a flight is odd; teams routinely send players back to their club facilities for tests and treatments.

Canada Soccer said that everything was handled reasonably on its end, and its frustrations with the criticism are understandable. Players get hurt on international duty. It happens.

But also, Canada Soccer hasn't exactly had an unimpeachable record in recent years. It's struggled for funding even as its teams have had historically good results, thanks to a bargain media-rights deal signed before the good times; it's had labor and wage disputes with its senior teams; and there was the little matter of the incredibly embarrassing drone-spying scandal at Paris 2024 that led to leadership changes. People at Bayern Munich could be forgiven for having their doubts about the organization's overall competency.

In the end, the tension stems from something Canada Soccer has never had to worry about before: looking after the health of an elite superstar. Davies is one of the best players in the world at his position, Bayern Munich are a massive club, and Canada, until very recently, was a total afterthought at the international level. There's a reason the governing body signed that cheap media deal in 2019: because no one wanted to broadcast (or watch) their games. Years of failure will do that to you.

That has, of course, all changed. Davies is the northern star, but he's joined by Jonathan David, Alistair Johnston, Ismael Kone, and others playing regularly in Europe's top leagues. The men's team is one of the best in CONCACAF and it will have real designs on earning points for the first time at the World Cup. But stepping up into the big leagues brings a lot more attention.

The Davies injury, and the fallout from it, is proof of that.

Scott Stinson is a contributing writer for theScore.