Bayern Munich's Alphonso Davies: "My time will come"
Alphonso Davies admits he is still adapting at Bayern Munich, but the Canadian teenager says he is improving all the time and is confident more first-team minutes will come his way.
Davies, 18, has made five substitute Bundesliga appearances since joining Bayern from Vancouver Whitecaps in January. The nine-time Canada international winger has also turned out for the Bayern reserve team in Germany's fourth tier - a yo-yoing learning curve he believes is all part of the process of becoming a better player.
"Every game I play, no matter how big or small, I just try to give my all in everything I do," Davies told Bayern's official club website. "Obviously it’s different when you walk in the stadium and you see 75,000 people compared to 700, but as soon as that whistle blows, football is football, you just want to play and have fun.
"I don’t see it as a negative thing [playing in a lower league]. Most of the players here, for example [Philipp] Lahm and [David] Alaba, played for the second team. It’s a transition you have to go through being a young player, get some minutes, you don’t expect to play every single game at that level in the Bundesliga. My time will come, I’m being patient."
Watch: Alphonso Davies' first days at Bayern
Although Davies has only clocked up 56 minutes of Bundesliga action to date, the Ghana-born midfielder has already written his name into the history books. He scored with his first ever shot in Germany's top-flight in Bayern's crushing 6-0 victory over Mainz on Matchday 26, in turn becoming the first Canadian to play and score for Bayern, and the first person born after 2000 to find the net for the record champions.
"Wow! I was speechless, I didn’t know what to say when I scored," Davies recalled. "I tried to do the Arjen Robben sliding on my knees. Before I was actually watching him and just how amazing he is still. I saw one of the videos where he slid on his knees and I thought I wanted to try that, as a kid looking up to one of your role models, and I tried it. Hopefully there are more to goals to come."
Davies has not played since due to a knee ligament injury sustained in the aftermath to his landmark goal, but has been putting in the hours at Bayern's Säbener Straße training base and was back in the first-team squad for the Matchday 29 win at Fortuna Düsseldorf.
"As a young footballer, it’s not easy to come from Canada and then try to play in one of the best teams in the world," he admitted. "It takes time, especially at a young age. It takes a lot of patience to be able to play. Yeah, you’re going to make mistakes but the players just tell me, 'make 100 mistakes but we know you’re learning. You learn from your mistakes'."
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At "one of the best clubs in the world", Davies is in safe hands. He admits to being like a kid in a sweet shop when he first arrived in Munich, but is now more accustomed to his star-studded surroundings, where he is able to learn from the very players he grew up wanting to emulate.
"When I first walked into the locker room, the first person I saw was Robben – I couldn’t believe it. 'Is that really him?' So I started staring at him. I shouldn’t have done that, but I started staring at him. You know, one of your role models as a kid."
Awestruck also applies to Davies' ever-growing appreciation of midfield string-puller Thiago.
"You want to learn from everyone, but I think one of the main guys I look up to is Thiago. We play different positions, but his awareness on the field, his touches, everything about him is so calm. He’s technically gifted and amazing to watch – as a teammate and as a fan."
Practise. Learn. Repeat. It's a philosophy Davies has been able to apply as much on the football pitch as he has in the classroom as he continues to wrestle with the German language.
"I think German is one of the hardest languages, but I have a good teacher, I have players around me who want me to learn the language," continued Canada's 2018 Player of the Year. "They tell me every time I have a chance to speak German, speak it. Don’t be shy.
"Obviously it’s not going to be perfect, the way you guys put your sentences. I’m learning sentence structure – it’s very different from English. My teacher’s helping me a lot, we usually have an hour or half an hour every day. I want to learn it."
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