Question of injured Alphonso Davies's participation in World Cup a cloud over Canada's training camp

Chris Jones reports on Canada's World Cup team from Charlotte, N.C.

A kind of crackle, like bad weather, can spark when one man’s certainty meets another’s doubt, when one man’s comfort coincides with another’s more desperate hours.

Jesse Marsch, the head coach of Canada’s men’s soccer team, knows better than any of us how he will spend his next four years. After Monday’s announcement that his contract has been extended through 2030, he knows that regardless of the results at this summer’s World Cup, he will, barring disaster, stand on the touchline at the next one.

If he isn’t, it will be because he’s decided to stand somewhere else. He’s 52 years old, splits his time between homes in Italy and Mexico with his wife, Kim, and three children who adore him, and is entirely at ease with his place in the world.

He is a man without needs, or even wants. All he has left are wishes.

And now, for those same four years, he must find a way to share space more comfortably with his opposite: Alphonso Davies, a man who doesn’t know what tomorrow will bring.

Davies likely won't play in Canada's World Cup opener: coach

After three muscle and hamstring injuries since February — which have followed his 15-month absence from the national side after he tore his ACL playing for Marsch — Davies must sometimes wonder why he’s been betrayed so often by the game he still fights to love, like soccer’s Bobby Orr.

He’s 25 years old, a refugee who is rich beyond dreams, but he’s also in the middle of learning one of life’s toughest lessons: There is no guarantee that soccer, or any other object of your affection, will love you back.

Marsch is the rare lucky one who’s been loved back. On Tuesday afternoon, he led 31 men onto an immaculate grass