Tristan Borges is Forge’s all-time leading scorer, is the only man to win the CPL Player of the Year twice, and he also scored the most dramatic goal in Hammers history, set a league standard for transfer fees that was at least three years ahead of even the most optimistic projections and has become a household name in provincial soccer circles.
But as he enters his seventh CPL season—in Year 2, he was with OH Leuven in Belgium on the aforementioned lucrative transfer—two decades of soccer experience have refined his outlook to a simple principle.
“My main driving force is my happiness, the joy I have in playing the game,” says the 27-year-old Hammers superstar. “Every single game, playing every day; a lot of players will say that’s the most important thing.
“As I get older, I start to recognize that certain moments—not just in my career but in the surroundings, with the team, with the league—I view a bit differently. Yes, I was able to make some money, but I’ve always played because I truly enjoy it, and I know I’m blessed. And because I have that mentality, I push the outside noise to the side. I try to take it day by day.
“Now, being at home, I enjoy spending a lot of time with family, and that’s very important to me. So is dedicating my time to being what I need to be as a pro.”
That’s always been the case. Growing up in Vaughan, at an early age, he was drawn to soccer like a moth to a flame and began to realize at the age of 12 that a professional career was something that he would definitely enjoy and should pursue. That set him on an interesting journey that eventually made him the CPL’s first Golden Boot winner, first Player of the Year, first Best U-21 player, first to be summoned overseas by a massive contract and first to live out the template of one of the league’s bedrock motives: providing significant soccer opportunities for Canadians, which hadn’t existed before.
Both Borges’ parents were born in Portugal and came, separately, to Canada when they were in their early teens. They’re a close-knit family, and Borges and his two brothers, one older, one younger, were all born in Vaughan, but despite their familial roots in a soccer-crazy country, that wasn’t the game of choice.
“To be honest, my family is a very big American football family,” he says. “I grew up following that. When it came to cousins and uncles, I was the first one to play soccer. There was not really another sport for me; being put in soccer at a younger age, finding that passion, finding that love and also being good at it, gave me joy.”
He began with youth soccer at Vaughan SC, moved on to Kleinburg and then went to West Toronto SC when he was 12 — “and we’ll say those were the important years when he started to transition to the Ontario Youth Soccer League, we went to Nationals a couple of times” — and he participated in some national U-17 matches. He was eventually called up for the 2015 Concacaf U-17 tournament and scored Canada’s goal in a memorable 1-1 draw against Mexico.
That goal and his overall play in the tournament set his soccer universe in motion. He wanted to play pro, but there was no CPL then, far fewer elite academies than there are today, and there were only three MLS teams at the high-pro level. Borges says he never even thought about going to college via the scholarship route, “so it was about finding a way to get into professional football. Once I started to go for the U-17 National camps, it was pretty important for me to be in a professional environment, which is how TFC came about. And that helped launch me into the next stage, going to Europe.”
He played League1 Ontario for Toronto FC’s third team as a 16-year-old, then went to the youth academy of Netherlands club SC Heerenveen for three years. He lived with a local family his first year, which helped him adjust to being on his own, learned to speak Dutch in team-provided lessons, then moved in with teammates for another couple of years.
In 2018, Borges started hearing through agents and soccer’s grapevine that the CPL was close to getting off the ground and decided to gamble on himself, returning to Canada for the final few weeks of the League1 Ontario season, only this time at Sigma with Costa and Bobby Smyrniotis, who had initiated contact with him.
Seven months later, he was in Forge’s starting midfield, playing the right side with Chris Nanco, Kyle Bekker and Alexander Achinioti-Jönsson in the inaugural CPL match, a 1-1 draw with York 9. He not only led the league in goals, but he also tied for the lead in pure assists.
The target had always been to get back to Europe, because he was familiar with the game on the continent, and his astounding CPL season gave him his chance. He was “focusing over there on playing, that’s my mentality, it’s who I am as a person.”
He had a good relationship with his coach, came off the bench in a number of games and started one match, but COVID shut down games for a while, and he feels playing regularly “is very, very important,” so he embraced being loaned back to Forge for 2021 and 2022. When the Leuven contract expired, he stayed with Forgerather than accept an offer from other CPL suitors.
“I’m happy with Forge, happy with what I’ve been able to accomplish with this team,” he says. “A big thing for me is winning. It was instilled in me as a young kid…you want to be the last team standing, you want to be an important player who contributes to that.”
He has scored some huge goals for Forge, but none bigger, and none more memorable, than the Olimpico from the right corner that sailed impossibly into the net in the 111th minute against bitter rival Cavalry FC to give Forge the 2023 league title, their first in front of their home fans. The photo of him standing with his uplifted arms spread, facing the wildly celebrating Barton Battalion, is one of the most iconic images in Hamilton sports history.
He says that he’ll savour that goal more deeply once his playing career is over, and while he rarely watches it, his family has replayed the tape many times.
“It was kind of a picture-perfect moment,” he said. “It was a special year, special team, special game. I think everyone on the field will never be able to forget that.”
The goal against Mexico as a youth player, the winning score in the first leg of the 2019 CPL finals, the international goals, and the Olimpico. Which one stands out most?
“To me, it’s any goal or an assist that comes in a big game,” he says. “I think big games are testaments to players who want to be on the ball, players who have enough confidence so that big moments don’t get to them. I try to take pride in being there in the games we’ve worked so hard all year to be there for. It pays off at the end of the year.”
And now we’re at the start of another year, and Borges opens it with some new teammates and some longtime colleagues. On the current roster, only Kyle Bekker has played more Forge games than Borges. And as he’s grown into his elevated status with the franchise and with the CPL, he shoulders some responsibility for the success of both.
“I think so,” he says. “I think I understand what my role is; I understand the impact I have on the team. What really helped from the start was having the same mentality as Bobby has. The ultimate goal is to be the last team standing, to be winning trophies, to be playing meaningful games.
“From Year 1, having a captain like Bekks set the tone and the standard, and when you win one, it’s a feeling that everybody wants to have continuously. You understand how important it is and also understand that other teams that haven’t had that are dying to have it.
“We’ve been successful, but we live in a world where nobody cares about the past…. they care about what you can do in the future.”
Forge kicks off its season on Saturday as it hosts Atlético Ottawa in a rematch of the 2025 Contender Semi-Final.