The last time Lucas Cavallini suited up for a game in Hamilton—one of the most memorable matches in local history—he wasn’t allowed to come onto the pitch.
But the 33-year-old striker and vastly experienced national team scorer will now see plenty of action at Hamilton Stadium after signing with Forge FC on Friday in a stunning enhancement of the Hammers’ attack.
Nicknamed El Tanque for his solid, muscular build, the left-footer has a thunderous shot, is physically imposing, and can dominate games in the air, far beyond what his 5-foot-11 stature would suggest.
He has scored 19 goals in 40 international games for Canada, netted 44 in 95 appearances over six seasons for three teams in Uruguay’s premier league, graduated to Puebla, the current leaders of Liga MX—one of the most entertaining and competitive leagues on the planet—where, in four years, he scored 30 times in 81 games, which propelled him to a club-record transfer fee to the Vancouver Whitecaps, whom he led in scoring in 2020 and 2022.
He also played with his close friend Jonathan Osorio; they’ve known each other well since they were kids, in the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, Canada’s first appearance in the global tournament in 36 years, after contributing to the long and much-celebrated qualifying process. One of the crown jewels in that stretch was Canada’s heralded 2-0 win over the heavily favoured US at what was then called Tim Hortons Field on January 30, 2022.
“But I didn’t end up playing,” Cavallini said. “John Herdman was ready to put me on, and I was about to step on the pitch, but then they told us I had tested positive for COVID, so I couldn’t go on the pitch.”
But he’ll almost certainly get on that pitch Oct. 3 when the Forge play their next home game, against HFX Wanderers after road trips to Calgary and Vancouver.
Cavallini had returned to Mexico from Vancouver in 2023, first in Tijuana, then for a second stint in Puebla where he had a great start to the 2024 Apertura, tying for the league lead with the likes of Paulinho, scoring four goals in the first four games.
But then he suffered a ruptured anterior cruciate ligament in his right knee and spent nearly a year rehabilitating it. He played only one game upon his return before requiring more surgery on the same knee and hadn’t played since then until he came off Forge’s bench Saturday in Calgary.
“I think the first time I kind of rushed things a lot,” he said. “Just that anxiety to get back on the pitch because I was coming off being a top scorer and had that adrenaline rush, ‘that no one is going to be able to stop me this season.’ Then BOOM, a second time, so I kind of took it easier the second time.
“But things happen for a reason. I feel great now. I feel like I’ve done a really great rehab. I’ve invested a lot of money in my body and physio, and our body is the tool that is going to make the best version of us. I want to continue where I left off, and I have that up here in my mind.
“I wanted a new challenge. Obviously, there was a lot of time since I played my last game, and Forge trusted me to come in at a time like this, knowing I had the injury. I have a strong work ethic, and to me age is just a number; it doesn’t mean anything, and I think this is a great fit for me because the club has an ethic that I follow a lot…which is that they are winners. That’s the main thing right there.”
After more than a year without any competition, Cavallini still needs to find his game legs, but Forge put him through a battery of physical and medical tests, and his leg is strong, and his body is in solid shape. He gave the knee a competitive trial in the final 20 minutes of Hamilton’s 1-1 draw over the weekend and said he was happy with how it felt.
Bobby Smyrniotis didn’t know Cavallini when he played his youth soccer in Mississauga and Toronto because he had departed for Uruguay with Osorio to pursue a pro career when he was only 16 because there was no full Canadian elite-player pyramid (with the CPL at the top) as there is now. But Smyrniotis certainly knew of him.
After some earlier, more casual talks with Cavallini, Smyrniotis said, “It just really came up in the last week: his interest in finding a place to play and this being a great place for a player like him to get back into things and come and score goals. I think it serves both sides very well. Him wanting to get that competitive edge back, and us getting a proven goal scorer in our lineup as we go into the final stretch of the season.
“He’s a striker, a real No. 9. He can go outside, but mostly he goes straight up the middle of the park. He’s really tough and physical. And it gives you another very experienced guy in the locker room who’s scored north of 60 goals in MLS and Liga MX, and then you add his international goals to that.
“He brings a fight to the game, and on a team that wants to win trophies, that’s an important thing that you want in the players. Puebla is a good Liga MX team, and he was playing at the highest level of the game, doing a great job there.
“When you have opportunities like this, you always try to make them happen. It’s a great move for our club. He’s a player who’s got a great pedigree for our national team, and this is also part of our league’s mandate and our club’s mandate: make sure guys like him and Mandjrekar (James) are playing at the highest level domestically.”
Cavallini has been scoring goals everywhere since he was a youth soccer player growing up in Mississauga. The son of a father from Argentina and a Canadian mother with Italian heritage, “As soon as I kicked a ball when I was really young, I knew I wanted to play soccer. It was in my head that I wanted to be a professional soccer player.”
And at 16, he pursued that goal, beginning a big-league odyssey that took him and Osorio to Uruguay, where he joined the advanced development program at Nacional, one of that country’s top professional sides. After three years, Osorio returned to Toronto and, eventually, TFC, but they were soon reunited for years on the national team.
“That time at Nacional was a big success for both of us,” Cavallini recalls. “It really helps you grow up. Jonathan went back, and I ended up staying there and getting onto the senior team.”
He lived in a bunk-bed dorm just outside Montevideo with all the other Nacional international players.
“It wasn’t luxury, but if you have the discipline and you know you want to be a professional soccer player, you have to do what it takes,” he said. “We came from a first-world country to a third-world country by ourselves at a young age, where you’re without your parents and where you don’t have your moms to cook and wash your clothes. We had to learn to do all that at a young age. Even clean the apartment…eventually.
“And I think that matures you in a way, not only off the pitch but on the pitch as well. It gives you a different character build. It just gives you that adrenaline rush to see that you’re doing things that a normal kid that age wouldn’t be doing off the pitch. You can scramble that all together, and it makes you feel good, so you can perform well on the pitch. And as long as you’re performing well, everything is fine.”
And he performed well. For Uruguayan sides Juventud (10 goals in 25 games), Fénix (38 in 76) and Peñarol (6 in 16) and then Puebla, where he rifled home 39 goals in 75 games.
He met his wife Natalia in Uruguay, and they have an 11-year-old daughter, Brianna, who’s a dancer, and two sons, Thiago (8) and Gio (7), who play soccer.
His youth coach at North York Hearts had converted him to striker although he preferred the wing, and still does, but he was always leading his teams in scoring and that continued in South America and Mexico. He kept improving his scoring skills, was often referred to as having a cannon for a leg and developed his well-known proficiency at the aerial game.
“I’m cheeky and smart when it comes to that,” he says. “It’s not that I jump higher than defenders. I sort of wait to get under their skin and learn to read a play before they can react and then win the ball. Me First always. As a striker, you need to read the play before the defenders, be more clever. You have to sort of imagine things before they end up happening. That’s today’s game.”
Vancouver pursued him for MLS, even making a cold call right to his front door in Puebla, and he eventually signed at the start of 2020. But the pandemic struck, and games couldn’t be played in Canada, so the Caps went to Portland for a couple of months and lived in a hotel, “which wasn’t a good time. I signed to play in Vancouver, and it wasn’t their fault we couldn’t play in Canada, but being away from my family for such a long time was difficult.”
In his second Caps season, the club eventually moved to Salt Lake, and the families got to be with the players, “but again not what I signed up for. My third year was my best year, and I was scoring goals.”
His contract with Vancouver expired while he was at the World Cup, where he got into the game during the 4-1 loss against Croatia. He and Osorio took a moment on the pitch to drink in the enormity of the journey from youth soccer to the largest sporting stage in the world.
“It was a dream come true for us,” he said. “We couldn’t imagine we would ever be in a situation like that. Apart from the result, it was a really great experience, one of the best. And for the families to be there and live that moment, it was really something special.”
After MLS, he wanted to land a spot in Europe and had some offers, but the transfer window quickly ran out on him, so he returned to Mexico and signed a good contract at Tijuana and then back to Puebla, where the family still had many friends and felt comfortable.
And now, he’s playing in his home province for the first time in his 15-year professional career. He knows Manjrekar James and Kyle Bekker from Canada’s international teams, and is impressed with the younger cohort as Forge goes through its usual every-fourth-season evolution cycle.
“I’m a guy who gives it all, who will try to open up the game,” Cavallini said. “On the defensive side, try to pressure the defenders, make it harder for them and recover the ball. Make it easier for my midfielders not to run so hard.
“I just want to get back on my feet and provide as much as I can for this club. I know what the principal philosophy here is, and I want to contribute as much as I can, especially being a striker.
“Goals, of course, which is what Bobby has asked of me, so I want to provide those.”