Hopefully it won’t turn out to be their last home game of the season, but only half of that equation is in their own hands...make that feet.
Forge FC tangles with emerging provincial rival Atlético Ottawa at Hamilton Stadium Saturday (1 p.m. OneSoccer and TSN), and after the two teams came out of last Sunday’s 2-2 opening leg draw, the winner of this match will advance to the single-game Canadian Premier League final in two weeks.
If second-place Forge eliminates third-place Ottawa, who won their first North Star Cup as CPL playoff champions last year, the Hammers will play in the CPL finals for the seventh time in eight years. And if expansion team CF Supra du Québec can make their 2-1 first-leg victory over Cavalry FC stand up in Saturday’s second semifinal in Calgary, Forge will host the league championship game on Saturday, Nov. 21. Should Forge and arch-rival Cavalry both win, the final will be played in Calgary because they edged Hamilton by two points to finish first during the regular season to claim the CPL Shield.
Although this could be the last game Forge plays at the stadium this year, it will be the first they’ll play there as Canadian champions. They’re focusing only on the 90 minutes in front of them, but fans can spend some of their attention relishing the Voyageurs Cup, which Forge won two weeks ago in a dramatic 4-2 shootout over five-time Cup winners CF Montréal, right in Montréal. It was the first time since the national men’s tournament went to its expanded format 18 years ago that a team not playing in the U.S.-based Major League Soccer had won, and it was the most important win in Forge and CPL history.
“We love playing at home in this city in front of our fans on this field; it’s a different environment,” reigning CPL Defender of the Year Dan Nimick said after Friday’s final training session of the week. “We lost to them last year at home in the playoffs, and we’d like to right that ship and feel we’re in a good spot.”
Fans can have their picture taken with the Voyageurs Cup on Saturday, and a large crowd—Ottawa drew 6108 to its home leg—is expected to celebrate and urge on a team that has won eight major trophies in its eight-year existence.
And there is also a backdrop of payback in the air—for both teams—as, under a different format, Ottawa eliminated Forge at Hamilton Stadium in the last-chance semifinal last year, and in 2022 Forge went right into Ottawa and won the playoff title over the Atlético, who had finished first.
“We’ve had success against them, but what matters is where the teams are at right now,” Nimick said. “They’re in a good moment. We didn’t have a very good game in the first game of the semifinal, but we came out of there with a draw, and we’ll have the fans with us this game. We’re in the driver’s seat, but we’re definitely not underestimating the opponent. They’re a good team with a lot of energy and a lot of good players.”
Forge has not lost since late August and hasn’t trailed in any of its last 11 games, but six of those have ended up in draws, and Smyrniotis’s crew wants to establish control early “with the ball and without it,” the head coach said. He says he’ll have a full complement to draw his game-day roster from, including veteran striker Lucas Cavallini, who’s available again after recovering from a hamstring injury.
- If it’s November, then it’s time for Bobby Smyrniotis to be named a finalist for the CPL Coach of the Year award.
For the eighth time in the league’s eight years of existence, the Greek Philosopher of Hamilton soccer has been selected as one of the final three choices for top gaffer. He was beaten out by others in the CPL’s first five years, but voters finally saw the light and awarded him the honour in each of the past two seasons.
The other two finalists also still have their teams alive in the playoffs: Cavalry’s Tommy Wheeldon Jr. and Ottawa’s Gustavo Leal, the first Brazilian coach in CPL history and former coach at Mexico’s Atlético San Luis, which, like Ottawa, is part of the Atlético Madrid club family. Leal took over the team’s reins at mid-season.
“This club has obviously done something every year and to do it for eight years straight is a difficult thing,” says Forge veteran Mo Babouli, who has played for Smyrniotis at Sigma FC and in two different CPL stints with the Hammers. “Bobby focuses on all the little details, the things that can make a difference in a game.”
Smyrniotis deflected praise for his eighth straight nomination.
“It’s always nice,” Smyrniotis said. “It means there’s some good work being done by a unit. It’s the work being done by all the players on the pitch and by the (coaching) staff together. The head coach is in the forefront, but it’s the work of all of us combined.”
Both he and Wheeldon Jr. have won the award twice, the only coaches to do so, and other than Wheeldon’s five inclusions in the final three, no one else has been a finalist more than once, as 11 different coaches, other than Smyrniotis and Wheeldon, have reached the final three nominees for top coach.
- With only Monday’s announcement of the finalists for the CPL Player of the Year remaining, Forge has put contenders into every balloted category so far: Hoce Massunda in the CPL’s U-21 Player of the Year finals; Daniel Nimick and Antoine Batisse in Defender of the Year; Dimitry Bertaud for the Golden Glove Award; and Bertaud and Batisse in Players' Player of the Year.
The Golden Boot Award is not a vote and is based strictly on regular-season goal scoring and was won this year by FC Supra’s Loïc Kwemi, who had 15 goals, four more than runner-up Tobias Warschewski of Cavalry. HFX’s Isaiah Johnston and Ottawa’s Ballou Tabla, who will be central to Atlético’s chances in Saturday’s game, were tied for third at 11 goals apiece. Forge’s leading goal-scorer was Ismael Oketokoun with five, the smallest tally for any team-leader in the league. But the Hammers had 19 different players score goals in CPL games, while Cavalry and Ottawa were second with 16 separate goal scorers apiece.
“I think that’s the strength of our team... the team itself,” Smyrniotis said. “It’s what we preach all the time, and each week it could be somebody different who is going to give us something different, and that’s what we’ve seen all season; everyone has contributed. Some guys have been consistently fantastic, but we’ve got contributions from almost everybody on the squad, and that’s important.”
- When keeper Bertaud and back/midfielder Batisse took two of the three finalist spots as Players’ Player of the Year, it was yet another validation of Forge’s off-season signings of the two players who grew up, and starred in, different parts of their native France. And each won their first trophies as senior professionals when they hoisted the Voyageur Cup.
“One of the biggest things we try to do is get our recruitment right, especially our foreign players,” Smyrniotis said. “When you’re bringing in foreign players, you want to make sure they’re important parts of the squad. We’ve got a lot of exceptional domestic players to choose from, so when we’re picking someone from outside the country we’re very meticulous in how we do it, and we’re very happy with the way it’s worked out with these two guys.”
Happy enough that the play of Batisse and Bertaud has probably exceeded even the Forge’s high expectations.
“You never fully know until you get the guys to the city with the team, but I can tell you after seeing Antoine and Dimitry in the first week of training you knew how good it was going to be,” Smyrniotis said.
- A lot is happening off the pitch as well on Saturday afternoon as Forge honours its boisterous fan base.
Local indie rock band Lucky Honey will entertain on the Stipley Stage; there’s extended Families on the Field time after the game, Forge players will sign autographs on the field post-match, and there are food and beverage specials and also Forge retail specials.
And the first 2000 fans to arrive will receive clapper noisemakers.