MOSCOW—Alphonso Davies strode across the stage at the Expocentre and treated it like every other stage he’s stepped up on to in his remarkable footballing life — a place to own, a place to shine.

He duly owned it. He shone too. Just like he always does.

Davies is the wunderkind of Canadian sports. Everything he has done — and he’s done plenty already — he has been the youngest to do. On Wednesday in Moscow, he might just have become the youngest man to win the World Cup.

The iconic Pelé has been the holder of that most cherished record for half a century now. The Brazilian raised aloft the greatest prize in world sports at the age of 17 years and 249 days in Sweden back in 1958.

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Sixty years on, Davies was 17 years and 223 days old when he stood at the dais in the darkened convention centre Wednesday and helped clinch the World Cup in a whole other way. In 57 stirring seconds at the 68th annual Congress of world soccer’s governing body, he recounted his life story to the 200 and more critical delegates and ensured the vote for who would host the 2026 instalment of FIFA’s men’s World Cup would only go one way.

The United bid of Canada, Mexico and the United States won in a landslide, seeing off its only challenger in the shape of Morocco on a final tally of 134 votes to 65 with one nation voting for neither and a couple more giving up their vote entirely. No matter. It was a rout, a rout that ensured the biggest sporting event in the world will come to Canadian shores for the first time, the U.S. for the second time and Mexico for a record third time.

All in all, not a bad Wednesday at the office for Davies.

Of course there was more to it than that. Any time spent around the bloated global sports bodies such as FIFA or the International Olympic Committee is enough time. Enough to turn a saint into a cynic.

So of course it is highly likely that when the 200 eligible voters moved their hands to push a button for the United bid or a button for the Moroccan bid it was dollar signs that flashed brightest in their minds and not Davies’ blinding smile. The North American bid had promised profits of US$11 billion, the Moroccans a mere US$6 billion. That kind of math isn’t difficult.

But all along this journey, the most difficult conundrum that had tested the North American bid team was the Trump equation. No matter which corner of the earth the senior members of the bid team — Canada Soccer president Steven Reed, his U.S. and Mexican counterparts, Carlos Cordeiro and Decio De Maria — pitched up in hopes for an ear and potentially a vote, it was the divisive, discriminatory tendencies of the U.S. president that presented itself as the first and foremost road block.

While Trump’s Twitter feed screamed division, they preached unity. Again and again and again. More tellingly though, they attempted to cast minds forward to that most blissful, barely imaginable of places — a Trump-free future.

By calling on Davies and two other teenagers — Mexican youth international Diego Lainez and U.S. Under-20 women’s international Brianna Pinto — to address the assembled delegates in their final address before the vote, the United team rammed home that 2026 could just be a different time.

Davies, the youngest player ever to pull on a Canadian men’s national team shirt, spoke about his parents fleeing civil war in Liberia, being born in a refugee camp but “a country called Canada welcomed us in and the boys on the football team made me feel at home.”

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“The people of North America have always welcomed me,” he said. “Given the opportunity, I know they’ll welcome you.”

Moments after the result was announced and Cordeiro stepped forward to offer words of thanks to the hall and consolation to Morocco, it was Reed and De Maria who were wrapped in a teary and emotional embrace behind him. It was hard to escape the sense that untangling the United States president from the United bid had weighed heaviest on these neighbours from the north and south.

Reed was asked afterwards about how they countered the Trump effect, especially when the frenetic final days of the campaign had coincided with the U.S. president and his hangers-on speaking of “special places in hell” for Canada’s “weak” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Reed is a slick operator and strong diplomat and even in this moment of elation wasn’t likely to slip but he appeared to again nod his head toward a Trumpless future.

“No I don’t think that Prime Minister Trudeau is weak,” he smiled. “The support we got from all three governments was overwhelming, very strong guarantees across the board. As it relates to name-calling I’m not going to comment. Those things come and go, the politics of today is not the same as two, three, five years down the road.”

When asked in the next question about Trump’s obsession with building a border wall to divide the U.S. and Mexico, De Maria responded simply that “the ball travels forward. There is no barrier that can stop a football.”

Not totally true. Davies can stop a football. He can trap one that hurtles out of the sky toward him, turn on a loonie, outmuscle someone twice his age and glide away into space to do more mesmerizing things. At 17 years and 223 days he can nearly do it all.

Hell, if he can take to a stage in the a half-lit Moscow convention centre in some of the darkest times that a lot of us have known and still make us imagine a bright future of borderless unity and joy, maybe he can do it all.

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