Article content continued
But there is a dark side that comes with all the recognition.
A photograph of Davies and his 19-year-old girlfriend, Jordyn Huitema, while on vacation in Ibiza, Spain, which was posted to her Instagram account in late August, was the target of more than a few racist and derogatory comments and direct messages.
On the weekend, both Davies and Huitema – a rising star, herself, on the Canadian women’s national team – took to social media with a selection of the offensive replies.
“These are the type of comments that are being put under my girlfriend’s pictures, also in her DMs and mine,” Davies, the first Canadian to win a Champion’s League title, wrote Saturday while posting the photo to his 3.2 million followers on Instagram. “This is absolutely disgusting.”
The couple has been together since September 2017, the same year Davies became the youngest player to both appear with and score for the Canadian men’s national team.
Huitema, meanwhile, is in the second year of a four-year deal with Paris Saint-Germain and has seven goals in 27 games in the French Div. 1 Feminine.
“We will never see the good in the world if all we see is the colour of each other’s skin,” Huitema wrote on her Instagram account, which has one million followers. “We are all part of one race, the human race.”
Canada Soccer was quick to get onside with Canada’s soccer power couple in calling out the discriminatory comments for what they are.
“Canada Soccer stands firm against racism and discrimination of any kind, both in the game and around the world,” the organization posted on Twitter, including the hashtag NoToRacism. “We are appalled with the hateful comments made to members of our players through social media.
