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Tim Adams sensed it the first time he ever saw Alphonso Davies play.

Back then, Davies was just 11 years old, a student at Mother Teresa Elementary in the Boyle Street neighbourhood of Edmonton’s inner city. Davies, the son of Liberian refugees, had been born at a refugee camp in Ghana. He’d come to Canada with his family when he was five.

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Adams leads Free Footie, a not-for-profit that runs soccer programs for kids who couldn’t otherwise afford to play competitive sports. He’d help mentor lots of promising young athletes. But something about Alphonso Davies was different.

“I saw him make his first touch, and I knew, immediately. This kid has a gift for the game. Other kids I’ve seen have had that level of athleticism. But he had the mind. He was way more than a guy who could kick the ball into the back of the net.”

That was just six years ago. Davies has travelled a long way since that Free Footie soccer tournament. At 15, he joined the Vancouver Whitecaps of Major League Soccer. At 16, he was playing a starring role on Canada’s national men’s team. And this past Wednesday, the Whitecaps signed a deal worth more than $20 million to transfer him to FC Bayern Munich, one of the world’s most elite soccer teams. He’ll start playing for them when he turns 18.