Star men Pulisic and Davies instrumental in setting up USA-Canada final

There’s several ways to view Sunday’s Concacaf Nations League final between the United States and Canada.

There’s the rare prospect of the Americans as favorites -- though it’s happened more frequently in recent years. There’s the showdown between Pulisic and Davies. And the possible continuation of a brief but magical run by B.J. Callaghan as interim U.S. national team coach.

That the news -- first reported by The Athletic -- of Gregg Berhalter’s return to the helm for the U.S. broke in the middle of the first half of Thursday’s thrashing of Mexico just added another unpredictable element of an unpredictable night.

And it even appeared to take Callaghan by surprise.

“I -- just honestly -- I don´t have any comment on that.” Callaghan said. “I've been focused on these guys since the day I was asked to take this over. I've given everything to them. They've given everything to the situation. So it's just something I don't have any real comment at this point, because I haven't really thought about it too much.”

But whatever happens in the final, the truth is the USMNT and CanMNT both came through their semifinals in large part because of their biggest stars, Canada's Alphonso Davies and the USA's Christian Pulisic.

Second-half surge

In Canada’s 2-0 victory over Panama, the Canadians maintained the conservative play style we’ve seen from them for years under manager John Herdman, with the only surprise the presence of Bayern Munich wide man Davies beginning on the substitutes’ bench.

More aggressive, Panama adopted more variations between 5-2-3 without the ball and 4-3-3 with it, led by Houston Dynamo’s influential Coco Carrasquilla in the center of the park.

The Canadians opened the scoring with Jonathan David, finishing a beautiful pass from Kamal Miller in the 25th minute.

Despite two great chances to score at the start of the second half, one for each side, the crowd only woke up when Davies stepped on the field midway through the second half. And he only took two minutes to score, receiving a pass from David on the left and driving a strong, high finish that had no chance of saving.

From then on, Davies took the attacking lead on the left ad helped Canada kill off the game, leaving Herdman pleased with the performance of his two star men with similar last names.

“They're bloody good players,” He said of David and Davies. “Just good players. Next level. They've made a difference tonight. We've got big-moment players. And we ask them, when those moments came, let them step up. The first goal was a really nice one, it was off the trailing ground in terms of the timing, we weren't able to break that line. I mean, you're proud as a coach when you see that type of talent, but also the effort. The effort tonight was fantastic”.