SOCCER SUPERSTAR GETS HIS DUE
Davies named Lou Marsh co-winner
To me, the Lou Marsh Trophy is for Canada's athlete of the year, not Canada's best sports story of the year.
If Edmonton's Alphonso Davies hadn't won, it would have been a major miscarriage of justice. Few have ever had such a remarkable year as the young talent did for Bayern Munich on the world's largest sporting stage.
But the Lou Marsh was once won by Terry Fox, and that was precedent enough to validate the nomination of Laurent Duvernay-Tardif and his truly inspirational story.
If there were ever to be a case for the award to be shared, this is probably it as Duvernay-Tardif joined Fox and Rick Hansen as outside-the-box winners.
The bottom line is that Davies, who has a pretty good story of his own to go with his performance in 2020, earning superstar status in the world's most popular game, joins a club of Lou Marsh winners that includes Wayne Gretzky, who won it a record four times, swimmer Graham Smith, figure skaters Kurt Browning and the pairs team of Jamie Sale and David Pelletier, all other Edmonton-based athletes who have won it.
It's interesting to note that all three times there were co-winners named, someone from the City of Champions was involved.
Smith shared the honours with skiing's Ken Read in 1978 and Gretzky, in a similar situation the last time it happened, shared it with Hansen, a wheelchair racer and activist for people with disabilities, in 1983.
Nobody ever suggested one of Gretzky's four was ever less worthy than the others, or that Smith's selection was somehow secondary because it was shared.
So congratulate Duvernay-Tardif and celebrate the two Canadians who created positive memories in a terrible and tragic year the world can't wait to turn the calendar on.
If you have trouble with an offensive lineman of no special status among his peers winning an award such as the Lou Marsh, you'll like his response when informed of the result.
“I'd like to meet Alphonso! Humbled to win the Lou Marsh Award with @AlphonsoDavies one of the greatest athletes Canada has ever produced,” Duvernay-Tardif tweeted.
And is there a Canadian who wouldn't like to meet DuvernayTardif?
The 29-year-old won the Super Bowl with the Kansas City Chiefs, only the ninth Canadian player to win an NFL championship. None of the other eight were up for the Lou Marsh, but none of them did what the McGill University medical school grad did. With the outbreak of COVID-19, Duvernay-Tardif deferred a US$2.75-million salary to spend the season studying
online at Harvard while working at a long-term care facility as an orderly, a story that resulted in his being named one of five to share Sports Illustrated's Sportsperson of the Year honours.
Davies, 20, was born in a refugee camp in Ghana and immigrated to Canada at the age of five, developing his talents on the soccer fields of Edmonton and Vancouver, where he played for the Whitecaps in MLS.
Davies played a significant role, being acclaimed by some as possibly the best left back in the world, as Bayern Munich won five trophies. He became the first Canadian to capture a UEFA Champions League trophy.
Named the Bundesliga's top rookie, Davies was last week named Canadian men's soccer player of the year.
Off the field, Davies was invited to join the United Nations High Commission for Refugees with an emphasis on COVID-19 relief.
Again, it would have been criminal if voters to overlook such a season, particularly in a sport where Canadian men have never ranked among the best in the world.
This is also a young man who played a role as the lead presenter in the bid to win the 2026 World Cup and proudly plays for Canada internationally.
“This has been a rollercoaster year and I'm very happy to be able to share the Lou Marsh with
another deserving winner @LaurentDTardif,” tweeted Davies, who is coming off injury and scheduled to return to the Bayern Munich lineup Wednesday.
Bayern apparently has a rule about not making players available the day before a match, and didn't lift it even for a player named athlete of the year for an entire nation. Nice.
Davies did compose the following for Richard Scott of Soccer Canada to get out to media members: “I'm truly honoured and humbled to have been selected as the co-winner for the 2020 Lou Marsh Trophy. Canada welcomed me and my family and I'm grateful for the opportunity to realize my dream as a professional player representing Canada on the world stage.
“Congratulations to Laurent Duvernay-Tardif on his selection and for an incredible year and thank you to all of the media who voted for me. In this challenging year, it's nice to know that we were able to make Canadians proud with our accomplishments and bring some happiness with our accomplishments on and off the field,” he said.
Because of COVID-19, Davies hasn't been home to see his parents and family in a year. When he finally gets back, and people can gather, somebody better be busy planning one whale of a celebration for him in Edmonton. It would be OK to invite Duvernay-Tardif for the occasion.