With 'road runner' speed to match rapid rise, Alphonso Davies ready for World Cup

Paul Stalteri first saw Alphonso Davies when he was 14 at a Canadian under-15 camp in Toronto.

"You could see right away he had something different," said Stalteri, a former Canada captain who was a Canada Soccer youth coach at the time. "Obviously at 14 a different body than he has now, but he was fast and dynamic and still powerful when you compared him to the players around him."

The question then was where would he play?

"At that age, almost like he is now, you could play him in any different position. And he was able to do special things," said Stalteri, now an assistant coach with Toronto FC. "We had him up front, we had him out wide. Obviously at that point you're not going to put one of your best players, if not your best player, as a fullback but we had him up top with Jonathan [David] in [a few] games which was a pretty potent tandem together."

"He had all the tools to be a real great player," he added.

Moving to Bayern Munich in early 2019 helped unlock those tools with then-manager Niko Kovac settling on him as left fullback after Injuries forced Bayern to make changes on its backline.

"People always looked at him as a striker or a winger up until that point," said Stalteri, who blazed a trail for Canadians in Germany where he won the Bundesliga title with Werder Bremen. "Look at where he is now? He's arguably the best one in the world in his position. He's had a great run and he's at a great club. Picking that place to go to was huge for him in his development and a real good decision for him."

WATCH | Davies bursts to beautiful goal in World Cup qualifying:

Now Davies gets to shine on soccer's biggest stage.

Davies' story is well known. Born in a refugee camp in Ghana to parents who had fled the civil war