Right from the start, they were the Killer B’s – Borges and Bekker - and they’ve remained that way, but we have to add another deadly B: Backline.
Undeterred by a desperate CF Montréal push that had knotted the series and seemingly steered it toward a potentially cruel penalty-kick shootout, Forge FC got savagely precise goals from Tristan Borges and captain Kyle Bekker within four minutes to eliminate the MLS side from the Canadian Championship, 3-2 on aggregate, Wednesday night at Montréal’s Stade Saputo.
“We spun the game with two brilliant goals from two brilliant players for Forge over the last seven years,” said head coach Bobby Smyrniotis as Hamilton beat Montréal for the second straight year in the national tournament’s quarter-final, in bizarrely similar circumstances to this stretch last year.
Hamilton’s four-man back line--with Alex Achinioti-Jönsson often dropping back as a fifth--withstood concentrated Montréal pressure in the first half (71 percent ball possession), and over the final dozen minutes to help preserve the day. They got a lot of help in defensive pursuit from those up front.
The Hammers now advance to the two-leg semifinal against Vancouver Whitecaps, the sole remaining MLS side in the national tournament, but also the three-time reigning champions. The skilled Caps, who are second in the MLS West, edged the CPL’s Valour FC 2-1 on a late goal in Vancouver late Wednesday night.
The first game of Whitecaps-Forge will be played in August, with the second leg in September. Atlético meets Vancouver FC in the other semifinal, so the national final is guaranteed to include at least one CPL team for just the second time (Forge, in the delayed 2020 final).
On Wednesday, Montréal had some missing players back and were determined to exert a last-gasp surge to extract something meaningful from a lost season, while Forge’s momentum advantage was slightly muted by the long gap between the first and second games, but Forge worked it perfectly. They tied this game because they were the better team at the key moments, and won the series because they are the better team.
After a regional power outage early in the second half halted the game for nearly half an hour - there was a lightning-threat stoppage in last year’s quarter-final at Stade Saputo that lasted five times as long - Montreal took a 1-0 lead in the game on striker Prince Owusu’s fifth goal in five matches, evening the home-and-away series at 1-1.
But the veteran Tristan Borges and fellow winger Hoce Massunda, who is only three weeks out of his teens, came on as substitutes, and five minutes later, Massunda fed Borges in the box, and the two-time CPL Player of the Year wired it home.
Just four minutes later, captain Kyle Bekker, himself a former Player of the Year, drilled a no-nonsense shot home after some havoc was created in the box by Mo Babouli (another Killer B) and Massunda.
It was Massunda’s dash that germinated the chance, reflecting Smyrniotis’s superior strategy in this game: count on the rearguards when required, then spring into the gaping holes he knew that would create.
Owusu’s second goal, with just seconds remaining in four minutes of stoppage time chaos, was essentially meaningless, other than keeping Forge from winning. They’ve now got two wins and two draws against Montréal in their last four head-to-heads after not beating them before last year.
“There’s a lot of happy emotions right now,” Borges said amidst the Forge jubilation. “If you make your way into a game like this, you just have to have an impact in one way or another. The team was putting all the effort in, and it would be a shame if you’re doing a disservice not only to yourself but to the team. I know this group deserves this. We’ve been excellent all year, and we just keep rolling.”
It was a testament to the importance of the Hamilton rearguard that OneSoccer’s broadcasters chose central defender Dan Nimick as the player of the match, and OneSoccer’s print story cited central defender Malik Owolabi-Belewu as its player of the match. Owolabi-Belewu was engaged in a two-man roller derby with Owusu for 94 full minutes. Rezart Rama and Mark Jevremović on Forge’s outside back wall were also authoritative.
“They fought so hard for us today,” Bekker said of the defensive corps. “They kept us in at all times, and we were under attack for large portions of this game, and that's always going to happen when you come on the road. Yeah, (Montréal) might be in a tough moment, but there's still quality on the other side of the field, and we just dug in there. We stayed as a unit. We bent, but we didn't break. Honestly, I'm so proud of this group.”
“We’ve been focused all year,” Borges added. “We know the quality of football we’ve been playing all season, not just the attack, but defending as well. I think that’s what makes our team kind of special: whenever we’re lacking the final touch in the final third for a goal, our backline and our goalie (Kassem Koleilat, who made some great saves) are holding us in. It’s a group effort, and it’s for sure something we deserve. Knowing us, we’re probably a little mad that we didn’t get a full win, but we understand the stakes of these games. We’ve been in enough of them already.”
And that experience showed. Forge withstood front-foot play by the home side in the early going, then found the pockets and exerted some pressure of their own. And when Montréal reasserted itself in the latter part of the opening 45 minutes, Forge dug in. Montréal got some good results when they moved forward Dante Sealy around, but it was almost as if Hamilton shrugged it off. They knew the opportunities would come, and they did.
“There’s a sense of belief,” Bekker explained. “There have been a handful of games we’ve been down and had to turn around, and it’s been the spark we needed to come together; whether it’s been to turn a loss into a draw or a draw into a win, and those are the things we need to build on.
“When you believe it’s like a superpower that you didn’t know you had.”
Smyrniotis’s substitution timing had its usual tone-perfect pitch. Borges and Massunda injected instant legs and zest into the front flanks. Smyrniotis took care to note that Massunda has played less than a dozen professional soccer games.
“It’s his first year as a pro, and we have nothing but positive things to say about the kid,” Borges said. “He’s got a great attitude. He’s brought that excitement on the field, and having veterans kind of guide him is another thing that makes this team so special. We have a great balance of veterans making an impact and young players producing when we need them to.
“Everyone is having an impact right now, but the job’s not finished.”
But CF Montréal is. They’re in last place in the MLS East, and have only one regular-season win in 11 home matches.
“Montréal's having a tough time--that's not a secret--in league play,” Smyrniotis said. “So we wanted to frustrate them and create space in moments. I thought it was very good, not only on the ball, but off the ball. We were very resolute and minimized any of the opportunities that they had. We knew that today they were going to give us their best.
“So, I just asked the guys to do what they do best and rise to the occasion, as we do and have been doing over seven years, and stick to the game plan. And yeah, the guys did a great job with that.”
Forge remains undefeated since the regular season started. They’ve got seven wins and six draws in league play, and two wins and a draw in the Canadian Championships. They have also kept alive all three routes to a potential berth back into the Concacaf Champions Cup: the Canadian champions get a spot, and so do the CPL regular-season and playoff winners.
In the Final Four, they’ll be facing another higher-paid, more highly-regarded MLS side in the talented Whitecaps. Before knowing their opponent, Bekker said that “sports is a funny thing; everyone decides paychecks, wages, salary caps, whatever it is, dictate the game. But we’ve shown year after year that we’ve got a group which has bought into the collective, and when you’re a collective, you can do special things.”
As they return to league play, Forge is just one point behind Atlético Ottawa in the battle for first in the CPL, and the two teams meet Saturday by the Rideau Canal.
Last year, they also played in Ottawa three days after eliminating Montréal, and were emotionally and physically exhausted, losing 3-0. Oddly, the previous weekend they had hosted Vancouver FC and lost 2-1, while last weekend they again hosted Vancouver but won 2-1.
There was also the déjà vu of the mid-match interruption, and Bekker mentioned that it had happened earlier this year in Winnipeg, in Concacaf play in El Salvador, and of course last year in Montréal when the lengthy stoppage allowed the home side to reassemble and nearly rebound in a game they had trailed badly.
“When you get wrapped up in that moment and you think, ‘Oh, what are we going to do? What does this mean? When are we going to start again? Are we going to play every day or not?’ you lose focus,” Bekker said. “You can control it. You’ve just got to stay in the moment. We knew we were going to play at some point. So there's no sense in dealing with stuff that’s above our pay grade. So the boys just kept it easy, kept alive, and got ready for whenever we have to go.”
Not only have Forge learned to disregard climate disruptions and gained knowledge from last year’s game in Ottawa about how to handle this weekend’s battle for first place, Borges thinks they have more cards in the deck, as evidenced by the five changes in the starting lineup between Saturday’s Vancouver game and Wednesday’s Montréal game.
“It’s crazy how things fall into place,” Borges marvelled. “Last year it was exactly the same. But like I said, I think this is the most depth we’ve had in the history of Forge, and for sure it’s showing. So we’re on to the next one already.
“It’s a great time to be a Forge fan, and a Forge player.”