Over the final couple of years, Davies has performed all he can to share it. He has given interviews to Gary Lineker and the BBC about his background. Bayern Munich — the membership that signed him from the Whitecaps as a 17-year-old and made him a German and European champion earlier than he turned 20 — produced a report from Buduburam on the early years of his life.

Most necessary, although, within the first few months of his coronavirus-imposed lockdown final yr, Davies began to use his fame and his platform to grow to be an advocate for these struggling as his household as soon as had.

For lots of the 80 million or so displaced individuals across the planet, he mentioned, “food and water can be hard to come by.” He continued: “It is not always possible in those conditions to social distance. Access to the vaccine is difficult. People are passing away. I wanted to tell people that they are not alone, that there are people out there who were in their shoes.”

He began to lend his support to the work being performed by the U.N.H.C.R., the United Nations refugee company, the physique that helped set up his household’s resettlement in Canada. This week, the group will appoint Davies as a good-will ambassador. He hopes to use the place to increase cash to renovate soccer services in refugee camps. He just isn’t solely the primary Canadian, but additionally the primary soccer participant, to be afforded the consideration.

It is becoming in additional methods than one. It isn’t just the primary act of Davies’s story that makes him appropriate, however the second, too. In his first few years in Canada, he struggled slightly academically, partly due to a language barrier and partly, he’ll admit, by a scarcity of inclination.

As a gifted athlete, although, he by no means discovered any hassle becoming in. Edmonton is Gretzky nation, however he didn’t take to ice hockey. (His skating has improved lately, he mentioned.) Instead, he performed slightly basketball, and emerged as a proficient monitor runner. But soccer was his past love, his clear present, the game he had grown up watching together with his father, a eager fan of each Chelsea and, particularly, Didier Drogba.