It’s cold, yes, but there was a noticeable warm intensity to Forge’s return to the realities of winter in Canada and the prospect of facing one of the best teams on the continent. The bubble at Redeemer University—where the Hammers get a bit of a reprieve with indoor practices Thursday and Friday before training outside Saturday, Sunday, and Monday—rings with encouragement, instruction, and high demands.
Players say their pre-season training stretch in Cancún’s favourable weather served its purposes of uniting a team that has added several new faces, practicing individual and collective skills and strategies, and fortifying its focus on what lies immediately ahead: Tuesday’s first leg in the opening round of the 2026 Concacaf Champions Cup at Hamilton Stadium against Mexican super-club Tigres UANL.
If repetition contributes to efficiency, having a second successive January in Cancún streamlined Forge’s ability to extract the most from training.
“We know what we have to do when we go down there, how serious we have to be and how the preparation has to be,” said veteran midfielder Mo Babouli. “We got our basic training in. It’s a new group with fairly new players joining our club. Just working on our shape, our formation, how we want to play, how we want to press.
“But that being said, we know that (Tigres) are already playing games, they’re in mid-season form, so it’s tough against teams like that in Concacaf.”
Very tough, and Hamilton is always facing “teams like that” in the Champions Cup. This will be their fourth appearance, and all four—Cruz Azul, CD Guadalajara, CF Monterrey, and now Los Tigres—have been against a top-six side in Liga MX, one of the most competitive and entertaining leagues in the world.
That’s the challenge but also the attraction.
“When we study them, we see one of the best teams in Mexico, so we know it’s going to be a tough game,” says defender Merko Jevremović, a second-year Hammer whose initial experiences with Forge came at last year’s Cancún camp, and his on-field debut against CF Monterrey.
“We believe that we prepared well. Two training sessions per day were a lot; we had three pre-season games, and I think we are ready for what we’re preparing for. I don’t know how, but the group is amazing here. I’ve never seen that before when I played in Europe. Everyone is so professional, and the team is so good, and everyone fits well. I’m really glad to be part of this family.
“What to say about pre-season in Mexico? Nice! But the cold here is not a shock; we’re ready for everything. For example, this is my second year, and I know what to expect. Our opportunity is our home stadium.”
Because they play a league game Saturday night, Los Tigres won’t arrive in Hamilton until the night before the game, which leaves them with little time to adjust physically to the expected frigid temperatures. Hamilton will want to jump on them and exploit any holes they see before the visitors become acclimatized. Tigres have breadth and depth at all positions, but an early Hamilton strike could force a change to the pace of the visitors’ cold-weather adjustment.
“They’re a good team, a possession-based team, so at times we’ve got to learn and sit in the block and not concede goals,” Babouli said. “The biggest thing is the set pieces. For us, just go out there and do the little things right…at the end of the day, it’s decision making.
“Whether in the air or on the ground, they play ball, and we just have to play our best for the next week or so."