Alphonso Davies did not choose where to be born. He came into the world in a refugee camp in Ghana, after his parents fled the war in Liberia with only the clothes on their backs. No one would have bet then that this child would end up wearing the captain’s armband for Canada’s national team.
But that is what happened. And now, ahead of the 2026 World Cup, the UN put him in charge of something even bigger: the ‘Gamechanging Team’, a symbolic team of 11 footballers who, like him, had to flee their country as children. Among them are Antonio Rüdiger, whose parents fled Sierra Leone, and Asmir Begović, who left Bosnia at age 4.
Today there are 117 million displaced people in the world, nearly 49 million of them children. Davies is proof that this number does not erase anyone’s future. It only postpones it.