Alphonso Davies is well equipped to stop Lionel Messi when Bayern Munich take on Barcelona in the UEFA Champions League quarter-finals in Lisbon on Friday according to club chairman Karl-Heinz Rummenigge.
Canadian youngster Davies had been a doubt to face the Catalonian giants after feeling a tightening of his groin in training on Wednesday, but now club Rummenigge isn’t just confident that the 19-year-oild will play, but that he has all the tools to contain six-time Ballon d’Or winner Messi.
“It’s a difficult and interesting task,” said the former forward, a two-time European champion with Bayern in the 1970s. “But we have a good ‘Messi stopper’. If Messi plays on his side, Alphonso will take care of him. He hasn’t really been outpaced or dribbled past this season.”
Messi, of course, boasts quite some numbers of his own. The Argentine has won the Champions League four times and this season has three goals and three assists from seven games in the competition. Davies is delighted to be taking him on.
“My dad called me, and he was like: ‘So you’re playing against your favourite player, I see.’ And I went: ‘Yeah.’ And then we started laughing,” Davies told UEFA. “We couldn’t even believe it, because he knows I looked up to Messi when I was younger.”
Now, Davies could have a huge say in which side boasts wider smiles after Damir Skomina’s full-time whistle sounds at the Estadio da Luz.
