It wasn’t so long ago that even the prospect of Alphonso Davies’ 2018 would’ve seemed hopelessly optimistic at best. At worst, you could’ve called it a notch short of fantastical.



As it turns out, Davies’ sale from the Vancouver Whitecaps to Bayern Munich might end up meaning more for MLS as a whole than it does for Davies himself. And now that Davies’ MLS career is officially over—at least for now—we might’ve just entered an entirely new era of the MLS Homegrown player.



PD. Post-Davies.



Before 2018, MLS Homegrown sales had been a speck of infinitesimal weight. By and large, European clubs preferred to simply poach the player directly from the academy source, before they were ever able to sign a pro contract. In other words, there was no sale. The player just left. Without a training compensation model in place in the U.S., the strategy was easy, it was free, and it was enticing for the player. Most...