As the ball caromed off the goal post to the Ottawa keeper’s right, Viktor Klonaridis quickly yanked his arms up to the side of his head: soccer semaphore for frustration.
But a couple of seconds later those same arms were wrapped around three teammates: soccer semaphore for relieved success.
The 33-year-old Forge forward had come off the bench for his first CPL appearance of the year—and just his second game of any kind in six months — just 18 minutes earlier with Hoce Massunda, 13 years his junior. Although he’s still climbing toward full-match fitness, he sped into a small hole close to the net and ran onto a perfect feed from Ben Paton.
He drilled a shooter’s shot that hit the post so hard it caromed like a lacrosse ball right back to Massunda who put another shooter’s shot behind a lunging Nathan Ingham.
Speed, anticipation, timing. The career hallmarks of Klonaridis’s still-solid arsenal, which Forge fans will glimpse in person for the first time in 2025 on Saturday afternoon (4 p.m. OneSoccer) at Hamilton Stadium. The Forge will be trying to follow up last Sunday’s 1-1 tie occasioned by the Paton-Klonaridis-Massunda conversion that kept them two points ahead of Atlético, by extracting a full three points against seventh-place Pacific.
This will be Klonaridis’s third home game with Forge; he had a brief stint with the team last summer before spending the 2024-25 season with third division Lamia, the fifth Greek team he’s been with in his interesting career. The other four were in the Greek Super League including historic powerhouses Panathinaikos and AEK Athens. He’s played over 200 games in that Greek elite loop scoring more than 30 goals and filling multiple positions on the attack and defence. He’s also played first division in France (Lens, Lille), Turkey and Cyprus.
“I know that football can take you anywhere and I’ve had the opportunity to use that to explore the world, so it’s been a good experience for me,” said Klonaridis, who got into 30 minutes off the bench in the Canadian Championships second leg in Vancouver before he was part of the successful substitutional barrage in Forge’s well-executed second half in Ottawa last week.
Born in Belgium to a Greek father and a Belgian mother of Flemish heritage – he considers himself more Greek than Belgian — Klonaridis spent some of his early years in Uganda and signed his first pro contract with AEK Athens at the age of 18.
After three seasons he was transferred for over $1 million (U.S) to Lille, then loaned to a Belgian side before Panathinaikos bought him. He helped them into the European Champions League and played 74 games over four years before Lens paid a high transfer fee to land him. They eventually loaned him back to Panathinaikos, and in 2017 he re-joined AEK Athens, who paid Lens close to $300,000 to acquire him for another four years. He scored against Celtic in Glasgow during Champions League third-round qualifying and had a pair of goals against Benfica in a 2018 Champions League home game.
“Our stadium holds 90,000 at AEK Athens and it was completely full against Benfica, Bayern Munich and Ajax,” he recalls. “You get incredible energy from those kinds of crowds. Playing at Celtic, and scoring was unbelievable.”
After AEK it was two years with the most successful team in the Cyprus Premier League, three with the Athens-based Super League side Atromitos, a stint in Istanbul, a 2024 season with another Athens Super League team (Kifisia), and three games with Forge, and finally, third-tier Lamia in Greece, where he played until their season concluded in the spring.
The CPL entered his vision field last year when Bobby Smyrniotis, himself of Greek heritage, called Klonaridis. He came over for a brief period before heading back to Greece, and he decided to return for this year’s sprint to the wire and the potential to play in another Champions Cup, on another continent.
“I didn’t know Bobby personally but last year in the summer when he called me, I was really interested in the way he spoke about Forge and the opportunity here and how the league is growing,” Klonaridis said. “I thought it would be a good opportunity to come and experience soccer here.
“I got fed up playing in Greece. There are a lot of problems behind the scenes, financially. Sometimes as you get older and you have kids you look more for stability and I know from the coach and other players that this is a more stable country.”
Klonaridis and his wife have three children: their son Sam is 10, and daughters Mai and Mae are 9 and 6, respectively. Klonaridis is here alone while the rest of the family remains in Greece so the kids can attend school. He says he’ll have “honest discussions with the coach” after the season and if he remains with Forge, which he wants to do, the family may join him here.
“If God opens the door for me here I would love to bring them to Canada,” he says.
He says his skill set, which brings some needed fleet-footedness to the Forge attack, revolves around that speed, “and seeing movements in the space behind the defence. You grow with experience in the game and understand when you can make the move and where you can make the move.
“I can say that I’m still fast now but when I was younger I was really, really fast and I still believe that once I’m fully fit I can reach that speed.”
He will likely play up front, as a primary or secondary striker, but can also move around the pitch as another position-flexible player for the versatility-loving Hamilton side.
“I played everywhere to be honest,” he says. “I’ve played in the middle, I’ve played right back, I’ve played right wing, left wing, second striker, striker. I enjoy playing striker; it’s a good team here so playing striker would be very enjoyable.
“I hadn’t played in six or seven months when I finished in Greece and my body needs time to pick it up.
“When I first came here, I didn’t expect the level of players to be so high. I was quite amazed at the quality of players on each team. Every team has some really good players. It’s a new league so it still needs some time but it has attracted some really good players and you can see from other teams, not only Forge, that there are some excellent athletes.”
He acknowledges that Forge is a veteran team with experience and depth, and despite playing on the biggest stages of the most global game and ringing up over 200 appearances in elite European leagues, because of Hamilton’s talent and experience he doesn’t feel he’s responsible to carry the club.
“You could say there is a part of me that wants to come and help the team with my experience in the game,” he says. “But I don’t feel the pressure that I’ve been brought here to do that, because I have a good relationship with all the players.”
Klonaridis will likely continue his game-fitness buildup with some action against Pacific, which is trying to finish this season strong, despite sitting in seventh place. Forge has won all three previous games against the Tridents, the league’s lowest-scoring team, by a combined 5-0 score. The west coasters haven’t won since Aug 10, with three losses and three draws since then.
But as Klonaridis said, every team in the CPL has dangerous players – Mexican forward Alejandro Diaz and French midfielder/defender Aly Nydom each have five goals and Yann Toulay has a quartet — and Pacific is only a point behind Valour who upset Forge a couple of weeks ago. So the Hammers will be earnestly on the front foot and will try to get off to a stronger first half than they have in most of their recent games.