Alphonso Davies of Canada celebrates with manager Jesse Marsch after defeating Venezuela on ... [+]
In the big picture, Jesse Marsch’s first competition in charge of the Canada men’s national team was a rousing success.
The Canucks progressed the furthest of any CONCACAF team at the tournament, a path that ultimately ended in Tuesday night’s 2-0 semifinal defeat to defending champion Argentina. In the process, they applied pressure on the region’s two biggest powers, the United States and Mexico, who both unexpectedly crashed out of the tournament in the group stage.
Yet a closer inspection of Canada’s performances may lead Marsch and his charges to wonder what might’ve been with a little more efficiency. His team scored only two goals despite creating 6.5 total expected goals in terms of chances generated over its five matches. And although it achieved the goal of progressing in a tournament that was a dry run for the World Cup in two years’ time, it didn’t really earn a signature victory: A 1-0 triumph against 10-man Peru can’t be considered as such.
And on a team without a ton of depth, it often felt like Bayern Munich star Alphonso Davies wasn’t as involved in the attack as he could’ve been.
Despite being Canada’s most talented player, the challenge of how best to utilize Davies is always an awkward one at the international level because he’s evoled from a left winger to a left back for his club.
And while a left back is often a major attacking piece for a team like Bayern — one of the giants of European football, and a team that often dominates possession — it’s not typically a feature of a national side like Canada that is currently ranked 48th in the FIFA World Rankings.
But when you look at how mightily Marsch’s side struggled to convert opportunities, you can’t discount who was involved in creating those chances.
It usually wasn’t Davies, who averaged only 1.47 shot-creating actions per 90 minutes over the tournament, good for only seventh among Canadian players.
That’s less than half the rate he averaged at Bayern in the recently completed 2023-2024 Bunesliga season. More tellingly, it’s also a considerable tick below the 2.67 per 90 he averaged with Canada at the 2022 World Cup.
That latter total was still only good for seventh-highest in the side, but it represented a much smaller gap compared to the rate of those above him.
These are admittedly flawed comparisons. Marsch is less than two months into the job, while the 2022 World Cup came four years into previous manager John Herdman’s tenure. It’s logical and even imperative that a new coach focus on the defensive end of the field first, especially for Marsch, whose talent deficiencies are pronounced in the back.
Herdman’s more experienced back line allowed him to start Davies in a wide midfield role more often, including at the World Cup.
The Copa America may have also been a particularly difficult environment to unlock Davies’ attacking potential, since most of it comes from wide areas and sometimes in games with an opponent who is also willing to commit numbers forward. The extremely small pitch sizes at the tournament couldn’t have helped, nor could playing half of the group stage with a man advantage against cagey opponents Peru and Chile.
And while Davies wasn’t as directly involved in creating chances for Canada, he was a major reason that Nashville SC’s Jacob Shaffelburg had such a strong tournament.
Shaffelburg’s success in the attacking third began in the second half against Peru, when he entered on the left flank in front of Davies, with Davies apparently given the instructions to remain inside rather than try to find space on overlapping runs.
With Peru understandably focused on Davies, Shaffelburg siezed the space he was afforded on the flank and eventually ended up providing the cross for Jonathan David’s goal in the 1-0 win.
Davies’ presence at the back was probably required for Canada to advance as far as it did, and it probably helped the resilience of Marsch’s side in the face several moments of adversity throughout the tournament. Those are things the new boss understandably won’t want to sacrifice.
But the truth remains that Davies — with honorable mention to David — is Canada’s most talented player. And for Canada to be the best version of itself, that talent has to be felt on both ends of the pitch. How best achieve that with the fewest negative consequences should be a challenge that consumes a large portion of Marsch’s time and energy over the next 24 months.
