It took less than three minutes to prepare to meet the opportunity.
“Before the game, I told myself the first chance I get, I’m going to go right at the defender, just to dictate the game,” said Forge FC’s winger Hoce Massunda. “And when I beat him, I saw the lane open up and said, ‘Why not let me just have it?’ And I just curled the shot for the top part of the right side of the net. When it went in, I was in complete shock.”
Those who’ve closely followed the 20-year-old graduate of Forge’s Sigma Academy’s progress through his rookie season weren’t necessarily in shock-he’s scored four times and had five assists as well-but Saturday’s opponents certainly were.
When Massunda cut into the box after a long cross-field pass and then launched his paydirt rocket in the third minute of Saturday’s home game, it ignited the crowd and an eventual 4-0 Hamilton victory over struggling Pacific FC and kept the Forge two points ahead of second-place Ottawa Atlético. The two-horse race for the CPL Shield and its automatic bye into next year’s Concacaf Champions Cup is now into its final three games, with Forge hosting the other bottom-tier CPL west-coast side, Vancouver F.C., Saturday afternoon (4 p.m.) at Hamilton Stadium.
It was Massunda’s second consecutive game-altering goal. In last week’s 1-1 draw at Ottawa, he came off the bench and 18 minutes later scored the equalizer, which gave a critical point to the Forge but, more importantly, took two away from Atlético to maintain Hamilton’s two-point lead. Just before taking the pitch Saturday, Forge players knew that Ottawa had won 3-0 over Cavalry, so they needed to start with forceful determination and keep it. Massunda’s authoritative strike from distance initiated the process.
“I couldn’t believe it,” he said. “Because in warmup I was missing a lot, and then the first shot I took in the game went in.
“I love that type of shot where I curl it, it’s my favourite shot. I can’t estimate how often I’ve practiced it. When I strike the ball, my body has to be over the ball, so it doesn’t go too high, and I’m not leaning back. I’ve been having a problem with leaning back, so when I took that touch, I really wanted to get my body over it. And it didn’t go too high, it didn’t go too low. Just enough to go over the keeper.”
Noah Jensen rifled a similar shot from a similar position 19 minutes later, and the Hammers kept pouring coal to the fire, controlling the ball and scoring two more, almost inevitable, late goals. Elimane Cissé scored on a diving header in the 88th, and striker Brian Wright notched his ninth of the season deep into stoppage time off a great feed from Harry Paton.
Massunda practiced a handful of times with Forge last season while playing for Sigma in League 1, and was invited to winter training sessions in the city, and then in Mexico, as Forge played for its February Champions Cup games against Monterrey.
He showed well enough to make the opening day roster and had let himself hope only to get into some games this year because there was so much talented depth up front. He’s crashed through that self-set ceiling –“Bobby Smyrniotis has shown a lot of faith in me and I’m grateful”—and become a sparkplug of creativity.
He scored his first CPL goal, also against Pacific, in the fifth game of Forge’s unprecedented 20-game unbeaten streak to open the season, and added a goal and three helpers in the next three games. Battling some injuries, which he credits the Forge training staff for helping him push through, he hit a dry spell in the scoring summaries but has found his touch again, with two goals and two assists over the past six matches.
“He’s been good throughout the season,” Smyrniotis said Monday. “It’s just about keeping consistency in the performances. There are games when you’re going to need guys to step up, and that’s exactly what we got from Hoce on the weekend. And we got it from him off the bench last weekend, and that gives him a lot of confidence going into the final stretch of games.”
Massunda is by far the youngest of three children, all boys, in his family. His brother Lee Victor, who still plays for Sigma, is nine years older, and his other brother Sonny-Jay is seven years older but no longer plays the game. “I was always literally looking up to them,” he says. “They were training me from a young age, and even last year, they were getting me ready for this year, so I’m thankful.
“Everyone in my family, including my dad, was an attacker. I always loved attacking, and I hated defending. In youth soccer, I was a striker or a winger and then became a full-time winger because of my pace.
“I grew up watching attackers only, and it made me who I am today, for sure. My family is very confident, and I guess it rubbed off on me. I’m a very confident guy. When I’m confident on the pitch, it makes me better.”
With Nana Ampomah injured—“we should have him back soon, but you want to be careful and we have other guys, like Hoce, who are very creative on the wing too,” Smyrniotis said—it’s very important for Massunda to be a constant threat.
“100 per cent,” he says. “The wingers we have here are so good that there’s always a competition. So with Nana being out, it was my turn to show people. I felt it was my opportunity and took advantage of it.
“I started very strong and through July and mid-August, I just kind of slowed down. No reason, it just happened, but as long as I’m picking it back up, that’s all that matters because right now it’s crunch time. We need all the points we can get.”
With Ottawa playing well, Forge needs to take care of its own business over the next three weekends: home to Vancouver, at Cavalry, and home to York in the finale of the season, and the 905 Derby.
Vancouver sits in last place, but in their last four matches, they have two CPL wins and a draw, plus a 2-1 loss to Ottawa in the Canadian Championship, which was just enough, on aggregate, to send them into the National Final against Vancouver Whitecaps Wednesday night.
“Vancouver is a hard-working team and we need to come out on Saturday and work hard, especially since they’re going to be tired with the final they have ahead,” Massunda says. “Every game is a big game now. We have to treat every game like a final, because if we lose one, we lose first place. We just need to do the same thing we did this weekend. Keep the ball. And keep attacking.”
Forge has beaten Vancouver all three times this year—2-0 in June on the coast, 2-1 at home in July, and 1-0 a month ago in Vancouver. Just three weeks before Forge last played them, Vancouver fired coach Afhsin Ghotbi and promoted Martin Nash into the top job, which has clearly had an impact.
“They’re a different team since the coaching change happened,” Smyriotis said. “They’re much more compact, more structured defensively. They know what they’re doing. They closed the space last time we played them with the new coach.
“They have a tough week. They played on Sunday, they play on Wednesday, and they come here on Saturday. We have to make sure that Saturday for us is a bit of a repeat of this weekend, where we control tempo, get high-speed ball circulation, keep them moving, and try to take advantage of any fatigue.”
HAMMERS AND NAILS:
- Forge's Noah Jensen, Marko Jevremović, Hoce Massunda, and Dan Nimick were named to the CPL’s game of the week.
- Bobby Smyriotis said Massunda’s opening goal on the weekend, in which he deked the defender so cleanly he sent him to the turf, “is important in games like that. We knew Pacific was going to sit a bit lower and take up pressure, so to break that down, you need to be very precise with passing or you need individuals who are able to break teams down: guys like David Choinière can do that, Nana Ampomah can do that, Hoce can do that. We played with two wingers out wide for a reason, to get those guys in isolation areas and try to get them into the box”
- In the 4-0 win over Pacific GK Jassem Koleilat extended his CPL blank-sheet single-season record to an even dozen.