Dealing with expiring contract players can always be a tricky affair with the player and agent demanding one thing and the club seeing things quite differently. In the case of Alphonso Davies, Bayern Munich find themselves in quite a quandary with huge demands being made at a time when doubts about the player’s development are coming to the fore. Add in the Real Madrid factor and the situation gets even more complicated.
Let’s start with the facts. Alphonso Davies current contract with Bayern Munich comes to an end on June 30th 2025 meaning that if the Rekordmeister don’t get him to commit to a new deal real soon, they will be in danger of losing him on a free transfer at the end of next season. For a player with a current market value of €70 million, that is not something that the club will want to accept.
From the outside, a contract extension for the 23-year-old Canadian left back would seem a no-brainer, but negotiations are reportedly being hindered by the player’s wage demands and the fact that Real Madrid are lurking in the background and potentially turning the player’s head.
Davies is currently earning a reported €11.25 million per year, but is demanding an increase from the Bavarians ahead of any new contract being signed. The club however are said to be disappointed with the player’s development and are stalling over how to progress with any new offer.
It is true that the Alphonso Davies we witnessed in the treble-winning season is not quite the same Alphonso Davies we see today and Monday’s edition of Kicker has the player as one of its main features, which puts in stark terms the player’s lack of development/ progress/ regression across the past few seasons. Entitled ‘Full throttle in the wrong direction’ it does add credence to Bayern’s reluctance to pay over the odds for any new Davies deal with some stark statistics from the past few seasons.
| Season | 2023/24 | 2022/23 | 2021/22 | 2020/21 | 2019/20 |
| Games | 16 | 38 | 31 | 32 | 43 |
| % mins played | 84 | 64 | 56 | 56 | 73 |
| Av Kicker rating | 3.63 | 3.29 | 3.17 | 3.59 | 2.95 |
| Min/ per success cross | 301 | 237 | 147 | 238 | 104 |
| Cross accuracy % | 29.2 | 37.5 | 26.2 | 18.9 | 33.7 |
| Success dribbling % | 59.6 | 57.9 | 67.5 | 69.1 | 68.6 |
| Passing accuracy % | 89.1 | 87.3 | 84.0 | 89.3 | 87.0 |
| Mins per scorer point | 527 | 259 | 393 | 596 | 263 |
(Statistics courtesy of Kicker)
The standout figure is that of how many minutes between each successful cross. Davies now takes 301 minutes as opposed to 104 in 2019/20, which basically means he delivers just one every three games! His average Kicker rating has dropped to 3.63 highlighting the reduction in impact he is having in matches. The number of successful dribblings are also down.
In his defence, the astronomical standards he set during the triple season are a harsh benchmark to judge a player and Davies himself has spoken of his apparent lack of progress/ development as seen from the outside. “The 2019/20 season was a very special one, not just for me, but for the entire club,” he explained to Kicker. “It was like a dream, everyone was euphoric. To experience a season like that as a young player and win the treble was of course incredible.
“In 2020, nobody really had me on their list, I was a relatively unknown quantity and I delivered. After that, the expectations of me were of course greater. I think that on the whole I did justice to this, but of course not always, not in every game. There are very few players who really always manage to do that throughout their career.
“My style of play has changed a little since then. A little less tricks, a little less dribbling, a little less risk. But I understand other things better today than I did four years ago. Of course I have more experience today. But I’m still young and I want to continue learning and improving.”
Davies is a young player, and perhaps he is being harshly judged by amazingly high standards that he set previously, but this is what you get when you are a Bayern Munich player. Yes he is undoubtedly a highly talented player and a valuable member of the first-team, but putting an appropriate monetary value on that ‘value’ is the unenviable task facing Bayern’s bosses right now.
Having been dropped for the game against Hertha Berlin (possibly as a signal from the club as to their dissatisfaction), Davies returned to the starting XI on Saturday against Augsburg and scored his first goal of the season. The longer the uncertainty goes on, the more likely it is to affect his game, but the fact that the Real Madrid rumours persist and Bayern are not jumping to pay his contract demands, means the Alphonso Davies conundrum looks set to be an issue for a while to come.
