Dimitry Bertaud came to Canada for exactly this reason, the same reason that Forge FC had scouted the 27-year-old goalkeeper, and lured him away from, top-flight soccer in France:
To log lots of time between the posts and come up with the kind of game-changing saves that can bubble up, seemingly out of nowhere.
Well, since he signed in early February, he has played every minute of Forge’s four games; two against UANL Tigres in Concacaf Cup, two more in the early CPL regular season which arrives at Week 3 with a huge home match against Cavalry FC Saturday afternoon, (4 p.m., OneSoccer, TSN)
Three of those four games have been played in Canada and in them, Bertaud has allowed a total of exactly zero goals.
And the blank sheets have been carved out of three distinctly different match rhythms: in a 0-0 draw against Tigres, perhaps the most-complete ball-controlling club side on this continent, the shots came with intensity and regularity, and he was forced to make a half-dozen brilliant saves, four of them in the first half in the 2-0 home opener win over reigning CPL playoff champions Atlético, he didn’t record an official shot against but he leapt high to intercept three set-piece services into the Forge box, snatching away any Ottawa hopes of an inspirational lift; and in Sunday’s 1-0 road win in Langley, he had to make three superb points-rescuing saves on open chances, scattered throughout the match and usually after a period of inactivity in Forge’s end of the pitch.
The common denominator in all three was Bertaud being mentally ready, emotionally willing and physically able to do what needed to be done.
“It’s exactly what we need,” says Forge head coach and technical director Bobby Smyrniotis. “It’s the nature of this club. You have to keep your concentration. It’s good to see him make those saves, especially early in the year. We already have a lot of confidence with him in the goal and that keeps it growing. He understands how it’s going to go.”
The 27-year-old Bertaud’s portfolio is stuffed with a wide array of assets, both native and learned, with hyper-fast reaction time at the top of the page.
He combines that innate gift with career experience—lots of it from high-level games with Montpellier in France and the Democratic Republic of Congo’s National Team, but even more from intense training sessions in those high-pressure environments—to give him an extra tactical edge. He is able to stay back a little deeper for a split-second more to read and respond. He’s had a couple of visually-jarring saves this year when the only things not fully deep inside the cage were his hands and the ball.
He’s got slam-dunk leaping muscles, his hands are human Velcro, his levers and chest are well-muscled and he recognizes when to suddenly trigger the counter-attack and when to safety-valve with passes more often thrown than kicked. He recognizes when to rush forward and pressure an under-marked shooter to hurry a scoring chance and, especially, a half-chance. And, like all good goalkeepers, he’s brave.
All of the above has been on display in varying portions over the opening four games.
“I came here to play and I’m getting what I needed,” said Bertaud, who speaks English but often uses one of his French-speaking coaches or teammates—in this case sophomore striker Maxime Filion—as a back-up translator. “I’m very happy. It’s why I came here … to do my job and enjoy being here.
“(The shutouts) have been good for me, but more important is good for the team. That’s my objective here.”
With Forge’s lineup shredded by five missing players and three or four starters playing despite a fatiguing flu-like illness that struck the team last weekend in Vancouver, two of Bertaud’s four outstanding saves were critical to the 1-0 victory. Had he not executed them, Forge might have extracted only one point, maybe none, instead of the full three they carried back east.
Most timely was his point-blank glove challenge on former Forge striker Terran Campbell in the 83rd minute when the game was still 0-0, just after Bertaud’s counterpart, Callum Irving, who was also terrific, had made a great diving save on Mo Babouli’s penalty kick. Seconds later, Vancouver broke down the field in numbers, but Bertaud anticipated Campbell would be fielding the centring pass in open space inside the box and acrobatically knocked the ball away as he was tumbling backward.
“It was a moment where things could shift a bit,” Smyrniotis said. “You’re in a situation where you think you can go up a goal, but now the opponent feels some life and you always know there’s going to be a surge in that period. He took care of the situation, and then we go down and keep on being resilient.”
That resilience would conjure up Filion’s winner in the 90th minute.
“I saw the time left and it was very important to stay in the draw,” said Bertaud, who hadn’t seen much action for long stretches prior to the glorious Vancouver opportunity. “He was open and I just stayed and reacted. You have to be ready to make a save at any moment, and it can be difficult for the keeper to do that, so you need to stay focused.”
At the other pole of the game, in the 18th minute, he surged out to throw his body in front of a screaming shot from a streaking Mohamed Amissi, who had broken Forge’s defence. With Vancouver surging early and looking to find some confidence to ride, a home goal could easily have stacked serious momentum in their favour, particularly with Forge’s roster contending with absences and illness.
“It was 1 v 1 and it was a save I had to do,” Bertaud said. “It was a reaction save. He was in front of me and I thought he was going to try to shoot across me, and he did.”
Smyrniotis agreed that was exactly what his team required early in a game, given the lengthy travel west and the lineup circumstances.
“We wanted to be a little more aggressive but with the condition some of the guys were in we couldn’t,” he said. “Each team had chances and when they have chances and our goalkeeper is needed, we want him to take care of business. He did that in the 18th minute, they got a great ball in behind, something a little uncharacteristic for us.
“But it happened and that’s why you need an elite, quality goalkeeper.”