Alphonso Davies, Bayern to feature in UEFA Champions League Final

Alphonso Davies is the first Canadian to reach the men’s Final of UEFA Champions League after his club FC Bayern Munich won 3:0 over Olympique Lyonnais. Davies and Bayern will next face Paris Saint-Germain FC in the continental club final on Sunday 23 August in Lisbon, Portugal.

This year, Davies and Bayern have already won both the Bundesliga championship and DFB-Pokal (German Cup), so they will take aim at a trophy treble when they face PSG in the European final. FC Bayern most recently won the UEFA Champions League title in 2012-13, also winning the Bundesliga and German Cup in that same year.

Davies was the second Canadian to win the Bundesliga and German Cup after Paul Stalteri in 2003-04, but Davies is the first Canadian to do so in back-to-back seasons. At the end of the 2019-20 season, Davies was named the Bundesliga Rookie of the Season, another first for a Canadian professional player.

Also this year, Davies was the FC Bayern Player of the Month in May, the Bundesliga Rookie of the Month in May, and the Canada Soccer Player of the Month in both February and July (there was no Canada Soccer award in May during the COVID-19 pandemic). Also this year, he set a record with the fastest speed in Bundesliga history, reaching 36.5 kilometres per hour in a league match.

Two years ago in 2018, Davies was the first male soccer player to win the Postmedia Athlete of the Year award. He was also the Canada Soccer Player of the Year in 2018 and the runner-up to Jonathan David in 2019.

As for Canada’s only UEFA Champions League winner, it was Kadeisha Buchanan with Olympique Lyonnais. Buchanan has won the European title in three successive seasons (2017, 2018, 2019) and has aimed to win a fourth in a row when UEFA Women’s Champions League continues with the quarter-finals on Saturday (Ashley Lawrence and Jordyn Huitema with Paris Saint-Germain could be in her way). Along with Buchanan and Davies, Lawrence previously reached the UEFA Women’s Champions League Final with Paris Saint-Germain in 2017 while Sophie Schmidt reached the UEFA Women’s Champions League semi-final stage in 2016 with FFC Frankfurt.