They’ve waited too long for this, but Forge FC and Nana Ampomah are targeting the road ahead, not the one behind.
“At the end of the day I’m happy to be back in Hamilton now and concentrating on what I have to do here,” said the highly-skilled forward who arrived in Canada from his native Ghana a few days ago after his work visa was finally cleared. “I’m very, very glad to be back. I missed the guys so much. I missed playing and being part of the team.”
Ampomah will be available for Saturday’s (4 p.m.) one-game elimination match against visiting HFX Wanderers in the first round of the Canadian Championship. They beat Halifax on the weekend in league play, which featured Kyle Bekker’s first minutes of play in the 2026 season after he had surgery for testicular cancer.
Ampomah, always a potential difference-maker on the top right side of the Forge attack, is a member of last year’s CPL All-XI team and a finalist for league player of the year, and enters his third year—second full season—with the Hammers, who could definitely have used his unpredictable and liquid touch during February’s Champions Cup, especially in the opening 0-0 draw against Mexican powerhouse Los Tigres UANL.
After undergoing team medicals at Hamilton Stadium the morning after his arrival, he worked through conditioning exercises on the sidelines as his teammates trained for a trip to Pacific FC, from which they returned with a win.
Ampomah will be available for Saturday’s Canadian Championship first-round elimination game against HFX Wanderers. Kyle Bekker will also make his 2026 home debut against the Wanderers.
The 30-year-old Ampomah and his head coach regret the long postponement of his arrival, and hope for quicker resolutions in the future, but are now looking only through the front windshield at his potential to play Saturday.
“I did my best to join the team real fast,” Ampomah said.
The relieved Smyrniotis added, “Obviously we’re happy to have him in the squad. We wanted him from January on; he’s been an integral part of the group the last two years in winning a couple of CPL Shields. He gives a fantastic dynamic component to our attack, not only in goals but in assists and chance-creation. He’s one of the most dangerous players in the league. We’re happy to have him here and we’ll slowly integrate him back into the squad.”
In Ghana, Ampomah had periodically worked out with a local team and was following a training regimen provided by Forge’s athletic training staff, “but training alone is not the same as training with the team,” he said. “That’s another reason I’m happy to be back; to get fit.”
There was also a long delay when Ampomah originally agreed to join Forge in February of 2024, but because it was his first Canadian work visa experience the club had expected to wait, and it was mid-June before he made his club debut, recording an assist in a 2-2 draw in Halifax. He started eight games the rest of the way with a goal and a couple of assists.
Last year, in his first full season, he scored six times and added three helpers, in just 19 games as he suffered some leg muscle injuries, a problem which has hounded him sporadically during his career. He says he now feels strong and healthy.
Early in his soccer career, Ampomah was identified as a natural attacker and played at Ghana’s national training centre run by Brazilian club Santos FC, best-known as the club which produced Pelé. When he was 20 he left Africa for Belgium to play for KV Mechelen’s U-21 side. Later that year he inked his first pro contract with Waasland-Beveren in Belgium’s top division and his teammate for three of his four seasons there was Béni Badabanga, who became his best friend. They were also roommates when both played for Forge in 2024.
He notched 18 goals for Waasland-Beveren and signed with German Bundesliga club Fortuna Düsseldorf who reportedly paid a club-record transfer fee for him. But following Ampomah’s first season, the German side loaned him to Royal Antwerp back in Belgium. There were management changes and after he didn’t suit up in his second season there he reverted back to Düsseldorf. He dealt with injuries upon his return and was sent to the second team, which plays in a mid-tier league encompassing Germany, Austria and Switzerland. He started several games but departed the club in June of 2023 when his contract expired.
Then Forge came calling and Ampomah was on his way—eventually—to his third continent of football.
“I feel like the CPL is really growing now,” he says. “They spoke to me about the potential of the league, which made sense for me. Also, coming back from not playing for a long time I thought it was a good place to get back on track. And Forge is the best team, the team where every player wants to play and so when I had a chance to come I couldn’t say no.”
Ampomah has missed significant-enough time because of injuries that although he turned 30 in early January, as a player he’s arguably 27 or 28.
“That’s a perfect way of putting it,” he nods. “In football, injuries are part of the game. All you can do is learn. My injuries have all been muscle injuries, and sometimes you can’t control those; they can happen when you’re stretching or somebody gets you on a bad tackle. It’s something that’s happened a lot but it’s part of the game. All I can do is take care of my body and control what I can control. Knock on wood, I haven’t had injuries in quite a while.”
While Ampomah is soft-spoken, gentle and considerate off the pitch—although Smyrniotis says he is upbeat in the locker room and often “the class clown, keeping his teammates loose”—he’s quite the opposite between the white lines. He looks as if he’s angry, and plays like it, is often forcefully direct with the attack, challenges opponents intellectually and physically and led the CPL in yellow cards last year.
“The field is a different thing than the dressing room,” he explains. “On the field you mean business, you either lose or win and losing is not part of it for a club like Forge. On the field there is no love or joking around. You have to do what you have to do and are getting paid for. I don’t think there are any jokes.”
Smyrniotis says despite Ampomah’s obvious skills and contribution, “I still don’t think we’ve seen the best of him over this year-and-a-half. I think we’ll see even more from him this year. I think he’s got more levels to him.
“When he came here he was coming off a period of not playing for a while. We were obviously happy to get him and re-ignite his career and he took that opportunity very well.”
Ampomah concedes that there’s more in his playing reservoir that can be tapped but says that Smyrniotis has already brought out elements which needed nourishment and development.
“He’s helped me a lot,” Ampomah said. “He put me back on my feet. He taught me a lot of things I was missing; how defence works, how he trusts players. After such a long period of not playing I needed that and he gave it to me. He gave me the trust and believed in me; even if I played a bad game he tried to find a way to talk to me that gives you confidence, which really helped me.
“And when you have the ball in the offence he lets you do what you want to, to express yourself, which is the most important thing.”
Nana is still in constant contact with Badibanga, who will now be his opponent in the 905 Derby, playing for the newly named Inter Toronto.
Only a few days before Ampomah left home—Dominic Frimpong, a member of Berekum Chelsea, a Ghanaian elite division team, was killed by armed robbers who attacked the team’s bus on the way home from a match. Ampomah knew of him because Berekum is where his parents Kwame and Joyce grew up, and his uncle had played for the club so he was paying attention to their games and roster.
“Nothing like that usually happens in Ghana,” he said. “But the most important thing is that they’ve arrested the guys.”
He has often spent time in Europe after a competitive season, but he was in Ghana to process his work visa “and take off some stress, seeing family and old friends.”
Now he’s back in Hamilton with his new-old friends, happy to be in the competitive but supportive environment.
And he agrees with Smyrniotis that there is still much more of his game to unlock:
“I think it’s true, it all depends on me to bring out what I have in me. It’s something that I’m really working on.”