Nineteen months ago, when he signed a short-term deal to help Forge fill the gap in the sudden departure of franchise goalkeeper Triston Henry, Jassem Koleilat could not possibly have foreseen this.
Koleilat is one win away from breaking the Canadian Premier League record for clean sheets in a single year of regular-season play. He’s got 10 shutouts, three more than anyone else in the CPL, which matches the 10 Henry and Cavalry FC’s Marco Carducci put up in 2022. The single-year record is held by Henry, who added one in the playoffs.
There are seven games remaining for Koleilat to establish a new league record, beginning with Saturday afternoon’s home match against suddenly high-scoring HFX Wanderers. Like every game in this stretch drive for a repeat CPL Shield—emblematic of first place in the regular season—it’s another big one for the Hammers. They lost for the first time in any competition since the CPL season opened, with a 4-1 stinker in Calgary last weekend.
Prior to that, they had obliterated the CPL record, which they also held, with 20 undefeated CPL games and 24 overall, including four non-losses in Canadian Championship play.
Forge, three points ahead of second-place Ottawa, will seek to keep or extend that lead against the Wanderers, who are on a four-game run of their own, winning their previous three and scoring 10 goals in the process after a significant on-the-road 0-0 draw in Calgary.
And after what the entire team considers a blip against Cavalry and the uncharacteristic four goals against—caused as much by their own miscues as by Cavalry’s inspired play—Forge will try to initiate a new run against Halifax, and Koleilat hopes he can hold them scoreless, for a new league standard.
“It’s definitely something you don’t expect,” Koleilat says of the 10 shutouts. “It’s kind of something you have to go into the season with as a goal, and if it happens, it happens. If it doesn’t, it’s still pushing you to get better. The fact that we’re progressing toward that is something we’re proud of as a team, it’s something I’m very proud of, and I’m proud of the guys for helping me achieve it. As a keeper, you love to get the shutout.
“Triston Henry set that record when he was here, so once I got my opportunity to get my games in, it’s something I’ve been chasing. It’s a personal goal of mine, and hopefully I can surpass that soon. Obviously, it’s going to take a team effort. Clean sheets are never an individual achievement but something our whole team puts in together. We’ve been doing a good job at that this season, and we’re looking forward to breaking more records with this team.”
Koleilat’s ascension has been nothing short of remarkable. Born in Prague, he grew up and learned his soccer in Dubai, then joined the youth system of Stade Lavallois in Laval, France, for two seasons before switching to the youth program of AC Sparta Prague. He then ventured across the Atlantic to U.S. community college powerhouse Iowa Western in 2019 before transferring to the University of New Hampshire for the 2021 and 2022 seasons.
Forge had tracked him after he’d trained with them prior to his senior college year at New Hampshire, and through his second-round selection by Los Angeles FC in the 2023 MLS SuperDraft. After LAFC kept him on their reserve team in the lower-tier MLS Next Pro, he left at the end of the season and signed a short-term deal in February 2024, just as Forge were about to play Chivas in the Concacaf Champions Cup. Henry had left the team for the U.S., and Koleilat was backing up Chris Kalongo.
They ended up splitting the season, with remarkably similar stats, but just before Labour Day, barely a year ago, Bobby Smyrniotis handed him the reins as No. 1. And the numbers have been spectacular. He’s averaging a clean sheet every second regular-season game: seven in 14 games last year, 10 in 20 games this year.
“Jass has done an excellent job for us this year,” Smyrniotis says. “When we need him most, he’s there, and that’s the mark of a quality keeper playing on a good team. Keeping your concentration and being there at the right moments. If you look closely at some of the key matches that we have had, he’s been excellent for us, along with the guys playing in front of him.”
Forge has a formidable and deep back line even without the still-injured Malik Owolabi-Belewu, and has allowed the fewest goals in the CPL, the only team averaging less than a goal per game against. With their depth and breadth, there are often long stretches when the goalkeeper isn’t tested, but in every game, there are dangerous surges by the other team, and Koleilat has to be as alert and finely-tuned as if he’d faced a dozen shots already.
“What that does too is breed confidence in your team,” Smyrniotis said. “They know that in a moment when maybe something has broken down, he’s the last line of defence and he’s going to take care of the group. I think that gives a lot of confidence to the guys playing in front of him—not to allow that to happen, but to know that that’s there. And that’s who he’s been all year.
“It’s just confidence in how he’ going to make decisions on the ball, and starting our possession and attacks. And also in situational play: Everyone needs to know they have to be sharp in set pieces, and he’s another guy who is fantastic in those situations. It’s all about confidence…he breeds confidence.”
Smyrniotis says that Koleilat’s shutout rate is partly a function of his deeply competitive nature. During Tuesday morning’s practice, for instance, “he argued with one of the coaches for about two hours about a ball, whether it went in the net or not. And he brought up a training session from last year, when it was the same thing. He remembers all of this stuff, and I think that’s what makes him great.
“You look at last year, he wasn’t the starting keeper, but he worked hard throughout the whole period, kept his head up, and he continues to do the same today.”
The four goals the Hammers surrendered in Calgary last week were the most they’d allowed in the last 39 CPL regular-season and playoff games, and they don’t expect anything close to a repeat in what is shaping up to be a well-attended Signature Match—players will sign special edition trading cards on the field after the game—against Halifax.
The Wanderers have scored four times in each of their past two games, both at home, with 21-year-old Brazilian-Canadian forward Tiago Coimbra notching half of them, including a hat-trick in a 4-1 win over Valour, and vaulting into second place in the CPL’s Golden Boot derby, with 11 goals.
This will be the fifth meeting of the two teams this year, and Forge hasn’t lost to a team that has traditionally given them trouble. They tied 0-0 on the East Coast in early May, then four days later, the Hammers eliminated Halifax 3-1 in a single-game Canadian Championship open-round game. Then it was 2-1 Forge victories in Hamilton on June 8 and in Halifax on July 25.
The Wanderers have 32 points, one back of third-place Cavalry in a three-team race for the spot that would guarantee at least one home post-season game. York United is in fifth place with 29 points.
“Halifax has changed,” Smyrniotis says of the Wanderers. “They had gone several games without a win and were changing the way they play. They’ve gone away from possession football and have five in the back. A lot of times, I’ve said the easiest way to win and for efficiency is to go five in the back and be tough at it. They’ve become a counter-attacking team as the season goes on and have gone away from some of their earlier principles. So it’s a different team than what we’ve faced four times.”
The Wanderers have become more of a team that uses patience to look for an opening and then counter-attacking and making the most of that up-field surge. But, Smyrniotis emphasized, it’s more pre-planned and deliberate than the highly-motivated counter-attack that Forge encountered when Cavalry reacted to Hamilton miscues and blew by their defences several times last weekend.
“That wasn’t them doing that by design; it was a lot of things we did wrong in that game,” Smyrniotis said. “And that’s what we’ve been discussing this week: just being sharper because we’re facing a Halifax team that last week against York literally stepped into York’s box three times in the first half, and they had two goals. York dominated most of the play, but the Wanderers were efficient; they had six shots on goal and they scored four times.”
Koleilat knows that he’ll be counted upon to help stem that counter-attack and says Forge has lost none of its confidence, despite the end of its phenomenal unbeaten run. One game is one game if you keep it that way.
“We still feel good,” he says. “The Cavalry game was a bump in the road, and it’s just something you have to get over. You put it in the back mirror and just drive away from it, and that’s what we’re going to do this weekend. Look forward to the next one.”
HAMMERS AND NAILS:
- HFX keeper Rayane Yesli is tied with Atlético’s Nathan Ingham for 2nd in CPL clean sheets at seven, three back of Jassem Koleilat. Yesil is third in saves with 55, as Vancouver’s Callum Irving leads with 79
- Forge defender Daniel Nimick, a former Wanderer, has made 1292 total passes this year, to rank fourth 68 behind leader Noah Abatneh of Ottawa, and 11 back of HFX’s French midfielder Lorenzo Callegari
- Forge has 39 goals, just three behind league-leading Ottawa, and is one of three teams with over 100 shots on goal at 102. Ottawa has 111, Cavalry also has 102
- Forge’s Hoce Massunda has four assists, two fewer than CPL leader David Rodriquez of Ottawa
- Brian Wright leads Forge with eight goals while Nana Ampomah has six.