Unable to break through the Moroccan defence, Canada could’ve certainly used a boost of speed and skill, but the beacon was never lit for one player in particular. <\/p>\n
Alphonso Davies didn’t touch the pitch in Saturday’s 3-0 loss to Morocco in the World Cup round of 16, with head coach Jesse Marsch saying that the captain “didn’t feel right.”<\/p>\n
“First, with Alphonso, he didn’t feel right yesterday in training and we got an MRI. And it was clear, so the good news was that there was no injury, but his hamstring didn’t feel right,” Marsch said after the game. “So we were hoping that by the time this morning he woke up that he would feel better, but he didn’t. So we wanted to be cautious and make sure that we weren’t risking anything. <\/p>\n
“And obviously, at the 60th minute when it’s 1-0, it would’ve been great to have him in the match. Or even at halftime. But we weren’t able to have him healthy and it killed him more than anyone, but I think it was the right decision to preserve him and his career and get him fully healthy.”<\/p>\n
Davies made only one appearance for Canada at the World Cup, coming on as a substitute against South Africa in the round of 32. He played the closing minutes of regulation after coming on for Tajon Buchanan in the 75th minute. <\/p>\n
The 25-year-old missed the three prior group-stage games with a hamstring injury suffered while playing with club team Bayern Munich in the Champions League semifinal.<\/p>\n
He has been on and off the pitch since tearing his ACL in the Concacaf Nations League third-place game against the U.S. in March, 2025. <\/p>\n
“He had a hamstring injury that he was recovering from. He was on a very linear path up until two days ago, and then he felt a little something,” Marsch detailed. “Turns out it wasn’t anything significant, but he didn’t feel right and we didn’t want to stress it. But other than that, the progression and the routine that we put him through on his return to play was really good and really disciplined.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Unable to break through the Moroccan defence, Canada could’ve certainly used a boost of speed and skill, but…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":780598,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[440],"tags":[49,48,561,82],"class_list":["post-780597","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-soccer","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-soccer","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/780597","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=780597"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/780597\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/780598"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=780597"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=780597"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=780597"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}