Frank Ciaccia remembers when he saw the future of Canadian soccer.



More precisely, he can’t forget it.



It was early in the summer of 2015 and Ciaccia, a Whitecaps “residency recruitment officer” — the soccer equivalent to a bird-dog in hockey — was doing what bird dogs do. On this particular day, that meant driving out to the (hit sarcasm button) soccer hotbed of St. Albert, Alberta to watch a team of 1997 birthdates take on those born in 2000.



In the latter group was a kid named Alphonso Davies.



At that point, Davies had merely been on the Whitecaps’ radar, like many teenage soccer talents across B.C. and Alberta. The club thought it might have something in Davies, but wasn’t sure what that something was. The 15-year-old, born in a Ghanaian refugee camp after his parents fled civil war in Liberia, had immigrated to Canada first through Windsor, Ontario before settling in Edmonton. He was intriguing, but...