Once a year, but every year for a half-decade. So, this has become a rivalry.
Outside of their CPL brethren, Forge FC has played more official games against CF Montréal than against any other team. Hamilton, the CPL powerhouse, and Montréal, currently struggling in the U.S.-based premier league, Major League Soccer, have met in the Canadian Championships annually since 2021, and have played five games.
It’ll be seven games by the time the two sides conclude their home-and-away TELUS Canadian Championship quarter-final. The first leg is at Hamilton Stadium on Tuesday (7 p.m.), with Stade Saputo in Montreal hosting the second match during the first week in July.
What’s at Stake
The winner advances to the semifinal against the survivor of CPL sides Ottawa and York United. The eventual National Champion captures the Voyageurs’ Cup but, more importantly, claims a direct entry into the 2026 Concacaf Champions Cup, the foremost club-team tournament in North and Central America and the Caribbean. Forge is looking to earn its third straight berth, and fourth overall, in the Champions Cup.
“With the way the Cup has been regionalized the past couple of years, it has us having a strong chance to play against each other,” says Bobby Smyrniotis, Forge’s head coach and sporting director. It’s always a good challenge to play in Montréal or Toronto, and it doesn’t matter what the form of their league is: we all know how important this competition is for everyone.
“For many teams, it’s an easier direct way to the Champions Cup. Not only is there a trophy there for the Canadian Championship, it gives you the prize of the Concacaf Champions Cup. That’s an important thing for them (Montréal). Their season isn’t going as well as planned or as they would like, but this is going to be as important a game as they have all season.”
A Tale of Two Seasons
Smyrniotis’s crew has drawn its last four CPL matches but hasn’t lost in its seven games since resuming play after being eliminated from the 2025 Champions Cup by CF Monterrey.
Montréal, meanwhile, is mired in last place in the MLS East with just a single win and four draws in 13 games, heading into Saturday night’s game against TFC, which is just one spot above them. Only the West’s LA Galaxy has fewer wins (zero) than Montréal.
But Montréal has gained a tailwind by beating TFC in penalties in this tournament’s opening round to advance against The Hammers, who did their part to continue the rivalry by thoroughly dismantling HFX Wanderers.
Montréal is in a very busy stretch of four games in 11 days, but has found some recent signs of success with their Voyageurs’ Cup win over Toronto late last month, a win against New York City last weekend, and a tie with Columbus Wednesday night.
They had dismissed coach Laurent Courtois just five games into the season and promoted his Italian assistant Marco Donadel to interim head coach.
“This quarter-final is 100 per cent independent of the league play,” says Smyrniotis of the ability of soccer coaches, players, and committed fans to mentally distance one concurrent competition from another.
“I’m sure this is something they’re discussing: ‘Four or five games and we win a trophy, we’re playing in the Champions Cup next year, and it gives a big boost to our team,’” Smyrniotis says.
“As a coach, I’m sure they’re doing that on the other side, separating one from the other and talking about what an opportunity this is.”
Although they were blanked 3-0 and 2-0 in single-game Canadian championship series in 2022 and 2023, respectively, with both games played in Montréal, Forge has otherwise fared quite well in a duel which, on paper---the kind of paper they write budgets on --- is a mismatch. Montréal’s payroll, while among MLS’s lower ones, is still about 10 times the CPL’s roughly $1.4 million salary cap.
But that hasn’t mattered in at least half of their head-to-heads, with the two teams memorably requiring 11 penalty kicks—decided by shots by the goalkeepers---in Montréal’s riveting 2021 single-game semi-final victory in Hamilton.
Then there was last year when Forge, already the CPL gold standard, grabbed the attention of the entire spectrum of Canadian soccer fans.
The 2024 Hammers played four games in this tournament against MLS teams, tying CF Montréal, 1-1 at home, then stunning them by erasing the away-goal deficit on the way to a 2-1 victory, to win the return match and the quarter-final round. They then beat TFC 2-1 in Hamilton before losing 1-0 in Toronto, to be edged out in the semifinal on away goals.
The second game of the cross-provincial-border class quarter-final was the stuff of local legend: Daniel Parra and Kwasi Poku, who’ve both since moved to higher leagues, scored in the first half to put Forge in the lead, forcing Montréal to try to score three goals to win. There was a long, long weather delay, which helped the home side gather itself. In the second half, they emptied the quiver, in what was essentially a shooting gallery. But they could only score once (Victor Wanyama), and Forge came away with their first series win over an MLS team.
Key Players and New Faces
Forge has made several changes since last year’s Canadian Championships, with Brian Wright as the striker and former Forge Mo Babouli returning to the side from York, where he was Wright’s set-up man. Babouli was outstanding earlier this week against powerful Atlético Ottawa in the School Day Match,
Attacker Nana Nampomah, who seems to be hitting his stride after suffering injuries through much of his first year here. Serbian left back Marko Jevremović comes off injury and returns to the active roster for Tuesday’s game, adding defensive and offensive options…and a component their MLS opponents haven’t seen in person before.
This year, Montréal added striker Prince Owusu, the 6-foot-3 German who was with TFC for two years and scored Toronto’s goal at Hamilton Stadium in the opening leg of last year’s national semifinal.
And they’re energized by the return to full health of Giacomo Vrioni, the Albanian-Italian striker who scored 21 MLS goals in 65 games over the previous three years with New England Revolution. Vrioni incurred a groin injury and missed 50 days before returning on April 10 and has rounded into form.
Forge fans will also recognize CPL graduate and Goalkeeper of the Year Emil Gazdov, and men’s national team players like Joel Waterman, Samuel Piette, and keeper Johnathan Sirois, another former CPLer.
“Owusu is the focal point of their attack, there’s no doubt,” Smyrniotis says. “And they’ve added another very good striker in Vrioni. They make a dangerous combination.
“The interesting thing is that Montréal is quite different from what they have been in the past. They’ve changed the coach, and he’s been tinkering with things. They look a lot different I the way they possess the ball.
“They’re a very heavy possession-based team, and that’s changed over the past month or so with Donadel taking over. There’s a lot of different formations, tactical looks to them, and I think he’s trying to find the combinations that fit with the personnel they have.
“To be honest, it’s a bit unpredictable. In the past, you knew exactly what they were going to do and how they were going to try to accomplish it. Now, game to game, we’re seeing them morphing into different players, different strategies, and formations, so it’s not as predictable as before.
“It doesn’t matter what their form has been like: they’ve got some dangerous pieces on the field. But like every team we play, they will provide some opportunities for us, and we have to make sure we take advantage of them.”
As they did last year.