Bobby Smyrniotis has often mentioned how fortune smiled upon Forge FC five months before they had even played a game.
Fate delivered to the fledgling pro team a deeply experienced European coach they hadn’t even known was living in town, and had exactly the skills they were seeking.
“But I was lucky too,” says Johan Albert, Forge’s goalkeeping coach and video analyst. “Because everything aligned for me. Nobody was in the position, so it was perfect timing.”
And more than a little serendipity, which has led to Forge goalkeepers winning three of the CPL’s first six Golden Glove Awards (Triston Henry in 2020, 2023; Jassem Koleilat, 2025) and Dimitry Bertaud among the front-runners this year.
In November 2018, Albert arrived in Hamilton from Nantes, France, with “two of our sons, two dogs and a cat”, a month after his wife Émilie had started a federally funded job here, helping French-speaking immigrants access programs in their native language.
Albert has a deep background of working in various facets of FC Nantes, which has competed primarily in the country’s top division and is well-known for developing players and a distinctive style of play. After he left FC Nantes in 2016, he started his own soccer consulting company and also was the video analyst for the Democratic Republic of Congo’s 2018 Men’s World Cup team before he and Émilie decided to emigrate to Canada.
While he searched for soccer employment in the Hamilton area, he had taken a job as a greenskeeper at a local golf course. He and his family were living in an Airbnb, and one night the person who rented the rooms invited them to a party he was giving.
“I heard about the CPL, which was coming; I heard about the Forge, which was coming, but I had no contacts; I didn’t know anyone,” Albert said. “I had tried to reach the Forge website but got no answer, so the person at the party took my number and a couple of days later got me the email address of someone who worked at Forge, and I sent them my resumé.”
His resume showed that he had 22 years’ experience in French soccer, 16 of those as a professional coach, had worked in youth and player development for one of the best talent-developing organizations in Europe, had coached goalkeepers since he was 17, came from a soccer family, and had spent years in complex video analysis. Plus, he had a Canadian work permit.
“My email got through the right people, and it ended up on Bobby’s desk,” he said.
And Forge had found their third coach—the full complement then, which has since grown to five—with Smyrniotis and Peter Reynders already on board. Including those two, director of soccer operations Jelani Smith and Smyrniotis’ brother Costa, who was director of football and business, everyone else in soccer ops but Albert had a history with Sigma FC, which the Smyrniotis brothers own. Outside eyes can be fresh eyes.
“I’ve tried to bring everything I knew to the club, from organization to nutrition to video,” says Albert, who works with goalkeepers in practice and also spends five hours a day studying and preparing video clips of anything Forge can use to improve their own play and break down that of their opponents.
“I try to bring everything I learned from 22 years at one of the best clubs in France.”
Albert grew up in Nantes and started playing soccer there—as a goalkeeper—at the age of 10, with his father Gilles as his first coach. Gilles had been a sport teacher and became a professional coach in the Nantes youth academy, and after 15 years moved up to the Nantes pro ranks. He was also a physical trainer, one of the first in that emerging profession.
“So, I grew up with people who were involved in soccer,” Albert says. “It’s been part of my life for 40 years.”
He played fifth division soccer, and one summer his father told him the Nantes youth soccer school was searching for young people to help, so he coached in the 7-13-year-old age brackets. He was 17 years old when he started, then went to university and was playing his own games on Saturdays and coaching on Wednesdays. He performed well and, a couple of years later, moved into the Nantes academy, coaching the U-13 team as well as all the goalkeepers in the academy.
“Usually, goalkeeper coaches are goalkeepers because it would be hard for a guy to do it who doesn’t understand the position,” he says.
He also became the administrator in charge of the pre-academy, doing everything off the pitch for the 22 academy players who came from all over France: liaising with their parents; handling the relationships with local schools; being with them before and after school at the small hotel where they were housed; helping with their studies.
“I was like a big brother to them, and still going on the pitch with them,” he recalls.
And six years later, the coach of the first team, who knew Albert had developed strong computer skills on his own, asked him to become the analyst for the first team.”
He met Émilie when she came to FC Nantes to work in media relations, and they eventually married in 2006, with the reception held in a big room in the team’s stadium, “because that’s where we met. It’s deep in our veins.”
But in 2016, a new first-team coach took over, wanted new people in the operation and wanted to have Albert go back to working in the academy.
“After 16 years in the pros, it was a tough one for me to swallow, so I said,
‘We better separate our paths.’ And I left the club.”
That’s when he launched his own company, and two years later, we had the idea of finding a new adventure with the family.”
So, they came to Hamilton, and soon thereafter, Forge. There is a small French-speaking community in the city, and the Alberts have made friends within it.
“I’m happy,” he says. “After living in Nantes for 43 years, I really made Hamilton my second city. I like it. People were very friendly and welcoming to us. Coming from France, when you don’t speak very good English, it’s tough. We were lucky to have people taking care of us.
And with the Albert, and Montréal-raised Kyt Selaidopoulos on staff, Forge’s fairly large corps of French-speaking players “find that really helpful when they arrive here.”
His job is split between coaching the keepers and four-to-five hours per day of video analysis. In the Forge’s first year, they had goalkeeping trials, which included several candidates, including current Cavalry FC keeper Nate Ingham, but settled on Quillan Roberts and Henry, with Henry ascending into the clear starter by the second half of the season.
“All the keepers we’ve had so far have been really open-minded,” Albert says. “And I can work with them the way I want. If I want to improve or change things with them, they are ready to listen.”
He says that Bertaud is the best the club has ever had at distributing the ball and is the best in the league.
“Dimitry was already really good, and I think he’s improved,” Albert says. “But I think we still have to correct and adjust some things. He arrived with a very good background, and he’s very good on the reflexes. He’s still learning. He was with (his French) team for a long time but didn’t have 100 games, and some automatisms were not there. He’s good with the right and left foot and is better with both feet than some defenders you see in the league.”
Pressed to rank the top three saves he’s seen in his Forge tenure, which is the entire history of the club, he lists No. 1 as a Henry stop on Pacific FC’s Amer Didić from 17 yards, followed by a reaction save by Koleilat last year in Ottawa – “It doesn’t look very spectacular, but it was an outstanding reaction,”—and Bertaud’s breakaway starfish thwart of Mohamed Amissi’s 1-v-1 in the first game against Vancouver FC this year.
“I think we’ve been very lucky to find the right keepers for our style of play,” he says.
“We are a possession-based team, so our keeper is usually facing fewer shots in the games, so it’s more about being focused and being ready at the right time.”
His overriding theme of goaltending protocol is proper body positioning. He says by the time keepers get to Forge, they can all catch the ball.
“So, to me it’s not about catching, it’s more about the way you move,” he explains.
“That’s something I work on a lot. That involves never being flat-footed, always being on your toes and ready to move. Not having too wide a stance. It involves tightening on the set, when the player’s about to shoot. You have to be ready to react, so you can’t be in the air, but you also can’t be flat-footed.
“You have to find the right balance.”