He’s grateful for the acclaim, but Hoce Massunda has bigger things in mind. For himself and for his team.
Massunda, in his second full season with Forge FC, is among the five finalists announced Tuesday for the Canadian Premier League’s U-21 Player of the Year. It’s the second straight season that the 21-year-old native of Mississauga has been nominated for the U-21 award, won last year by HFX Wanderers’ Brazilian forward Tiago Coimbra, now playing for IFK Göteborg in Sweden’s top division.
“It feels good,” said the 21-year-old outside forward who has four goals in his 16 CPL starts this season, second-most on Forge’s deep (19 players) goal-scoring list. “To be in my second year and be nominated both years, I feel like it’s only going to get better from here. I feel like next year it could be Player of the Year or something like that. U-21 is something for me, but obviously I want to become one of the best players in the league, and I want to be in the Player of the Year conversations.”
As you might gather, Massunda does not lack for self-belief. He’s talked about it on this website in the past; it’s important when you play a dynamic position to have unflappable confidence, something he gained from growing up with two older brothers who played soccer, forcing him to step up his play just to keep pace with them.
“I feel like I’m a confident person and it’s not just about soccer,” he reiterated this week. “Everyone who knows me knows I’m very confident, relaxed, all the time, and I feel like that rubs off in soccer and for soccer, that can be very good because even if some things don’t go well or I mess up, I feel I can do it the next time.”
Massunda is one of those players you always notice because he’s daring. He likes to dribble into the box, deking players, for a good shot or to set up a high, trailing teammate in the middle. He’ll challenge defenders, often more than one, and try to shimmy by them like he’s on a slalom course. It can border on outrageous, and sometimes it doesn’t work; sometimes it does, but it always occupies the minds of a defender, especially when you’re playing the same team back-to-back.
“Being a dangerous wide player, his shiftiness and his ability to switch directions is fantastic, and you need those kinds of players in the attack,” says head coach Bobby Smyrniotis. “He’s versatile, and depending upon how you’re playing it, he can bring the same kind of danger to the opponent on the right side or the left.
“And I think this year he’s matured. He’s given more consistent performances, which is important.”
The most pressing thing is to win, and if Forge can beat provincial rival Atlético Ottawa on Saturday (1 p.m. OneSoccer and TSN) at Hamilton Stadium, they’ll qualify for the CPL championship final for the seventh time in the league’s eight years. They’ve won four playoff titles but also have another four trophies, all equally as important: three CPL Shields as regular-season leaders and the most humungous one, the Voyageurs Cup, which they won two weeks ago over CF Montréal, to become the first non-MLS team ever to capture the Canadian National Championship in the 19 years of the current all-pro format.
Sport is a result-based business, so the wins and the eight trophies are the ultimate barometers of success, but professional sport is also about entertainment. Forge, traditionally a front-foot attacking group—incidentally, so are Atlético—are always fun to watch, and with his adventurous expeditions into the deep attacking area, Massunda is one of the players who can quickly catch your eye and keep it.
“Those are the players who are bold, who are risk-takers in a positive way and give the fans something to cheer about and get excited about during games,” Smyrniotis says. “They have that creativity and artistic flair on the field that is needed in an attacking player and that supporters love seeing.”
Massunda says he’s aware of the entertainment value but “to be honest I don’t think about that too much. I do like that people come to watch me ...for sure. That’s how I play. I feel like sometimes there’s not enough of that, and you just try to bring some of that back so the kids in the stands want to do that when they play. And I feel in this league we have a lot of players like that, this year especially; players who want to take it to the line, and I think it’s great for the league and great for the kids watching us.”
It should be an offensive game Saturday, if Sunday’s drama-filled opening 2-2 draw in Ottawa is any indication, and Massunda would like to see a couple of things.
“I want to see our fans come out and help us out for sure; a big crowd always makes a difference,” he says, “But I also want to see us pick up our level over last game and show that we can win another trophy. Especially after already getting the big one this year. If we get another one with the CPL playoffs, everything we worked for this year will be rewarded. We want to be the only CPL team that wins two trophies in the same season.”
Massunda’s parents are from the Democratic Republic of Congo, and his father played soccer in Congo and France before the family emigrated to Canada. His two older brothers were born in Calgary, and Massunda was born after they moved west to Mississauga. He joined Forge’s academy at Sigma FC when he was 16 and, in 2024, spent practices with Forge and played League1 for Sigma to get lots of field time. Forge and Sigma liked what they saw and took Massunda to winter training camp in Mexico in early 2025 in preparation for Champions Cup. He signed a short-term contract for that CONCACAF tournament and has been with the team since then, sometimes starting, sometimes off the bench, sometimes not playing.
“You look at players who’ve come in here from the academy, and usually they’ve spent some time here before they sign their contract,” Smyrniotis. “Going back to guys like Noah Jensen, Malcolm Duncan, Kevaughn Tavernier, all those guys. That allows you to be familiar with the environment so when you sign your first professional contract, you’re aware of where you are, you’re aware of the standards here and can hit the ground running.”
Massunda recalls that when Smyrniotis summoned him to join the pre-Champions-Cup training camp in January 2025, he wasn’t expecting much pitch time in the winter friendlies scheduled against strong Mexican opposition.
“I’m a new kid and thought I wouldn’t play much, but the day of the game I’m starting, and I scored five minutes into it, and my confidence went very high,” Massunda says. “But the level of play was also very high, so my mind was everywhere. Second game, I started again and 10 minutes in I scored again and I was very happy with myself and said this is ‘the level for me and I just want to stay here with this team.’”
Which he did, and when Champions Cup training rolled around again 10 months ago, it brought with it off-season signing Dimitry Bertaud, who had grown up and played in France, but whose mother is from Congo.
“Dimitry and I have a definite connection,” Massunda acknowledges. “I look up to him as a leader for sure. I felt like we just clicked right away because we’re from the same spot. From the first day when he knew I was also Congolese, we just clicked from there. When you’re from the same country, I think you’re naturally going to like each other a lot.”
Massunda is a deserved nominee on a strong slate of U-21 top player candidates, with four goals and two assists. Smyrniotis said that the winger has shown the results of working hard to make a difference—goals, assists, hard shots—in the final third of the field, and Massunda says his time at Sigma and Forge has taught him when to challenge and when to lay off and look to pass, tactical situations which he’s still improving upon.
For the U-21 award, he’s up against a deep field of impressive Ottawa defender Sergei Kozlovskiy, who’s only 18, FC Supra du Québec's midfielder Alessandro Biello, Cavalry FC defender Adam Pearlman, and Vancouver FC backliner Kian Proctor. All have made an impact on their teams.
Massunda is hoping to become the third Forge player (Tristan Borges, 2019; Kwasi Poko 2024) to win, and it should be noted that those two and the other five U-21 winners—Mo Farsi, Ali Hojabrpour (who played with Forge but won with Pacific), Sean Rea, Matteo de Brienne and Tiago Coimbra—all at one time signed contracts in a higher-ranked league, for much bigger money.
“I’m not going to rush it,” Massunda says, “Because I know my time is going to come and I’ll be patient.
“My long-term goal is to play in one of the top clubs in Europe for sure and hopefully become a Canadian star. Hopefully I can make history that no Canadian has ever done before.”
As advertised: Hoce Massunda is not short on confidence.