Bayern Munich and Canada's Alphonso Davies on 'tough' road to recovery
Alphonso Davies has talked about the mental turmoil he suffered during his long recovery from a serious knee injury as the Bayern Munich and Canada star eases into the record German champions' Bundesliga and UEFA Champions League challenge.
Barely a month after signing a contract extension through to 2030, Davies suffered a ruptured ACL in his right knee while playing for his country in the CONCACAF Nations League third-place play-off against the United States in March.
After months of arduous recovery work at his club's Säbener Straße training facility, Davies made his first competitive appearance in more than 200 days when he came off the bench for a late cameo in Bayern's Champions League win over Sporting Lisbon on 9 December.
Watch: Happy Days once again for Phonzy
Following those two short minutes on the pitch, five days later Davies then played almost half an hour of the 2-2 draw with Mainz on Matchday 14 as he approaches full match fitness and the end of a long, hard road.
"The recovery is more mentally based than physically, because physically muscle memory will naturally come back and you'll get the job done," Davies told Bayern's official website. "But the mental side of it, knowing how long you're gonna be out and not being able to play and do certain things, it's tough.
"Sometimes you, your mind, it gets tired and your body is like, 'OK, I don't wanna do anymore'. But mentally you have to be tough, you know, that's the only way that you're gonna make it through. Because if you don't do it, no one's gonna do it for you. Not everything is just joyful on the pitch, but also outside the pitch when you do get injured, it's tough."
He added: "I remember the first couple weeks, between six to eight weeks, I wasn't able to walk. I had to be on crutches and, you can only do so much with the crutches and you can't walk so far.
"When you're up there working out and you see all your friends, having fun playing football and sometimes you think to yourself like, 'I wish I was out there'. It's like when your mom says you can't go outside and then you're seeing all your friends running around outside, that's basically how I felt that in the moment."
After emerging at MLS franchise Vancouver Whitecaps - where he made his professional debut aged 15 - Davies joined Bayern in January 2019. He quickly established himself in the first team, playing a major role in the club's 2019/20 treble-winning season, claiming the league title and DFB Cup before lifting the Champions League trophy aged just 20.
Aside from a heart inflammation issue that developed during the 2021/22 season that kept him out for 11 league games, Davies had not suffered a lengthy lay-off before this year.
His morale was kept high by support from his teammates, including Jamal Musiala, who himself returned to training this week following the lower leg fracture sustained against Paris Saint-Germain at the Club World Cup in July that meant he has spent a lot of time alongside Davies in the Bayern treatment room.
"I think about my injury too when I see him, and when he was in the hospital, I went to go visit him. But he was in good spirits, so I was surprised, because for me, when I was at the hospital, I was pretty, let's say, down.
"The struggles and the ups and downs that I went through, I know he might go through it as well so I'm trying to be as supportive as I can. I was trying to keep his spirits up. It can set you back, because I know when you go down with that mindset of negativity, it eats away at you," explained Davies, who said former Bayern teammate David Alaba - himself sidelined for more than year at Real Madrid with an ACL injury sustained in late 2023 - had also been in touch.
"A lot of people call me. A lot of people try to keep me positive. A lot of people that have had a similar injury or have been in a similar boat, I should say. David called me and told me to keep my head up, keep smiling and keep pushing because it's only going to get better from now on."
Davies' positive outlook was forged early in his life by his resilient Liberian parents. They fled their country during the Second Liberian Civil War - meaning Davies was born in a refugee camp in Ghana - before emigrating to Canada in 2005 when the Bayern star was still a toddler.
Watch: The best of Alphonso Davies
"They worked two jobs each, and I had two little siblings that I had to take care of so I had to grow up really fast in my household. But, for me, I was always the happy guy in the family cheering everyone up, because you know growing up I realised how hard they worked and how hard they try to make life easier for us," he explained.
"The rehab was tough. Every day I woke up in pain. I couldn't sleep. I was waking up at like 5 a.m., 6 a.m., couldn't sleep properly, turning this way, turning that way, can't bend my leg. For me, my mindset, I was like, 'I can either sit here, I feel bad for myself and not care and just be negative or I can put a smile on my face and be the positive guy I am'."
Davies' return is not only positive for him and Bayern coach Vincent Kompany, but also means he should be in top form come next summer and the World Cup.
The first Canadian to score a World Cup goal when he found the net against Croatia at Qatar 2022, the 25-year-old will be one of the top-of-the-bill performers when the world's biggest sporting event comes to North America in June with the tournament being hosted across his home country, Mexico and the US.
"Yeah, the future is looking bright," he said. "I mean, the hard part is done now. I just look a step ahead and continue to work on my recovery and develop more muscles and more things I can work on to prevent this from happening again."
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