Okay, just one down with 27 yet to go, but Opening Day still gave Forge FC a positive barometer reading on one of their key off-season targets.
Roster depth. And plenty of it, endline to endline.
With 2025’s two major CPL trophy-hoisters—the regular season champion Hammers and playoff winners Atlético Ottawa—playing the league’s first official 2026 game and first anywhere in the world with FIFA’s experimental, and radical, “daylight” offside rules, there were a lot of storylines vying for attention on Saturday afternoon.
There was also an important three points to divvy up between the CPL’s highest-scoring teams from last year, and Forge got ‘em all with a 2-0 egg hunt at Hamilton Stadium which was a lot more convincing than some statistics would indicate at first blush.
It’s difficult to imagine that many other teams, if any, in the league could have delivered the kind of unflustered control against an explosive attack like Ottawa’s that Forge exhibited on Saturday despite fielding a squad without Kyle Bekker, Khadim Kane, Noah Jensen, Daniël Krutzen, Dan Nimick and Nana Ampomah.
Just to recap that talented absentee sextet: Bekker is the team captain, 2020 league Player of the Year and all-time face and symbol of the CPL; Kane and Jensen are high-motor energizing midfielders who up the ante, often off the bench; Krutzen and Nimick are veteran starting defenders, with Nimick the CPL’s reigning Defender of the Year; and Ampomah is the starting right winger and, by many accounts, the most pure-skilled player on the team, perhaps even the league.
That’s a lot to overcome but was met with a mere shoulder shrug by the rest of the roster because of its versatility and depth. A penalty kick by Brian Wright in the 21st minute was all Forge would require because of its calculated defensive plan, but midfielder Ben Paton—one of the best players on the pitch—gave the victory the emphatic decisiveness it deserved via an in-tight volley in the 68th minute.
Both goals came off set pieces—Wright had been fouled by promising young Ottawa backup keeper Tristan Crampton during a set-piece delivery—and both goals were reviewed by the CPL’s new Football Video Support challenge system, which got them right each time.
While Ottawa took great solace afterwards in holding a 65-35 possession edge and completing 85 percent of their passes while holding Forge to a pair of set-piece goals (Paton’s came off Tristan Borges corner into the box, deftly chested and re-directed by newcomer Antoine Batisse), to a neutral observer this one was never really in doubt.
Forge had several near misses, including a cross-bar screamer from Borges, who wore the captain’s band, in what was at times a shooting gallery. Ottawa had exactly zero shots directly on goal and only a trio at goal, much of their possession advantage was on the benign outside edges where the Hammers, like border collies, had deliberately herded them. And a good percentage of their completed passes were unchallenged in their own half of the field.
Ottawa, though, is still working out its young backline and their offence’s quick counter-striking prowess, led by Manny Aparicio, cannot be under-regarded. Sleep on them and you sleep on nails. They were more of a collective in the second half than they were in the first, when they played individually. The Atléti should be a presence all season, so not only did Forge open with three points, as they did last year on the way to a record-shattering regular season, they were a very important three points because a probable contender didn’t harvest any of them. Remember, Forge won the CPL Shield by only two points over Ottawa last fall.
“We focus on us and what we need to do to get three points,” said Forge head coach Bobby Smyrniotis. “Today we saw multiple individual performances, but mostly a group performance. Mo (Babouli), Borges and Anthony (Aromatario) were absolutely fantastic in the midfield.
“We wanted to keep the ball in their half as much as possible. With control and without it.”
Forge, like Ottawa, are a front-foot team but in so many of their out-of-league successes, most notably in the Canadian Championship elimination of CF Montréal and 0-0 Concacaf Cup home draw against Los Tigres, Hamilton has had to learn the mental discipline and patience to let the other team retain possession while also limiting its sting. The idea is to cut off the direct challenges and seal the middle routes, preventing the opponents from being able to pivot dangerously in either direction.
Aromatario, the Ontario Premier League player of the year, continued his impressive Forge debut with his strong game sense anticipating middle-zone thrusts and forcing the play outside. For the same reasons, holding midfielder Paton was probably the most valuable Forge player of the opening hour, not only scoring a goal but winning six duels and completing 10 passes in the final third of the pitch. He was the personification of the defensive overloading which can lead the other team to believe they have more control than they actually do.
Rezart Rama, Antoine Batisse and Marko Jeremović were close to impregnable at the back which helped Dimitry Bertaud record his second clean sheet in three Forge starts (two in Cup play). Ottawa did have three corner kicks, all of them dangerously placed into the box, but he leapt to athletically snare them all.
“He walks out there and he grabs them like they’re his and nobody else’s,” Smyrniotis said.
That kind of obvious confidence pervades good teams and even youngsters must have it to earn playing time at Forge, which was shown by starting teenage wingers Hoce Massunda and Kevaughn Tavernier. They flanked striker Wright, who had an excellent game, coming close to a second goal and laying the ball off to others for scoring chances. He also benefited from the extra few feet occasionally allowed by the trial offside rules.
“His combination was really good,” Smyrniotis said of Wright. “A lot of times we used him as a focal point and he did a good job keeping us in possession, something we’ve asked him to focus on and that we’re working on a bit more. He was busy today; he had what let’s call half-chances that he gets himself on the end of, and if he keeps on doing that the goals will go in.”
Despite the multiple player shortages, Forge’s depth paid dividends at both ends of the experience spectrum: young starting forwards and bench strength in Ismael Oketokoun and Maxime Filion; French veterans Bertaud and Batisse.
“We’ve been practicing for four months, so has Ottawa,” Smyrniotis said. “Some young players come in and I don’t want to say they challenge the veterans but I think they make the veterans’ age a little lower. There’s just a different step in training and that’s what you want each and every year. You need freshness from a different way. They’ve been good in preseason and bring a big energy to what they do.”
Continuing the biggest year in Canadian soccer history, Forge’s next home game is in two weeks against another anticipated contender, bitter rival Cavalry FC, who eliminated Forge in the second semi-final last year. But before that, they travel to Langley to play Vancouver FC, which finished last in 2025 but had a great Canadian Championship run before losing to Vancouver Whitecaps, and earned a berth in Concacaf Cup. They’ve retooled their lineup and will be looking to grab a statement win in front of their supporters after just two CPL victories at home last year, fewest in league history.
They’ve got veteran keeper Callum Irving, attacker Nicolás Mezquida, who had eight goals last year, young Thierno Bah, who starred in the Canadian Championship, and 18-year-old midfielder Emrick Fotsing, who can score. But the Eagles’ main strength should be the continued development of a unified identity revolving around hard work and defensive play under head coach Martin Nash, who took over late last season.
And the first of Hamilton’s longest road trips should help team’s bonding this early in the season, with the Forge carrying more new players than they had once anticipated.
“I think it’s always good,” Smyrniotis said Saturday afternoon. “But at the same time this team has travelled to Cancun together, has travelled to Monterrey together. We’ve changed time zones, we’ve gone on the four-hour flights. I think the challenge here is that now three points are available and that’s what we talked about in the dressing room afterward. Let the three points be as contagious as possible… it’s something you want each and every week. It drives you through the week and when you get there, show the kind of drive that they showed out there today.”
Hammers and Nails
- A dozen players made their CPL debuts in the game, six for each team. G Dimitry Bertaud, D Antoine Batisse and MF Aromatario started for Forge and Maxime Bourgeois, Ismael Oketokoun and Noah Bickford came off the bench.
- Vancouver FC lost its opener in Langley 1-0 to HFX Wanderers with former Cavalry FC keeper Marco Carducci making several game-saving stops for Halifax.
- Both Forge goals Saturday were challenged by Ottawa head coach Diego Mejia on the new Football Video System but the challenges were overruled. The first FSV challenge (which reviewed a potential Batisse foul) took well over four minutes to resolve.
- “The referees have to check on everything,” Bobby Smyrniotis said of the delay. “We looked at it on the monitors and were 100 per cent sure after 30 seconds. But I get it from their end. They want to make sure that it’s 100 per cent. Hopefully that will get sped up, and that we’re not going to have people taking advantage of it to slow things down in different situations, like penalties. I’m not saying that’s what happened today but these are things you’re going to learn through that process.”