Forge FC’s head coach insists that until they wrap up their next nine days of CPL business, his team won’t think about the Vancouver Whitecaps.
But the rest of us should already be thinking about the ‘Caps because they’re coming to town on August 13, and what was already a high-priority game has suddenly been elevated to a once-in-a-blue-moon, absolutely must-see event.
Because the top Canadian team in the highly-rated Major League Soccer, deep into the best season of its 15-year MLS history, has just made the biggest signing in franchise history.
The way has been cleared for attacker Thomas Müller—one of the world’s great pressure players of the 21st Century—to sign with the Caps after playing 17 years with renowned Bayern Munich, the juggernaut of German soccer.
The Hammers and Caps square off in their TELUS Canadian Championship two-leg semi-finals with Game 1 in Hamilton, followed by a second leg in Vancouver, September 16.
That will be three days after Müller turns 36, but so much of the versatile (forward, midfielder, second striker) Müller’s game is ageless. He has a superlative tactical IQ, a GPS-like sense of positioning, loves to be involved in the build-up and can still finish. Even though he was mostly a substitute for Bayern Munich in the 2024-25 season, he still contributed eight goals and eight assists in 49 appearances.
He is the most decorated German soccer player in history, having hoisted 34 trophies: he won the 2014 World Cup with Germany, was with the finalists who lost to Brazil in 2002 and was the top scorer in the 2010 World Cup when Germany finished third.
Müller’s 756 appearances for Bayern Munich are the most in club history and he scored 250 goals and 231 pure assists across all appearances. In his time there, Bayern Munich won 13 Bundesliga titles, including an impossible 11 in a row from 2012-13. They also won the 2013 and 2020 Champions League. He is one of only three players to have at least 100 Bundesliga goals and 100 assists.
Besides his World Cup successes, Müller helped Germany to the finals of the 2008 European championships and semi-final berths in 2012 and 2016.
“They’re having a good season in their league and they’re looking to make themselves a bit better and when you want to make yourselves a bit better you go and see what’s open in the free market,” Forge head coach Bobby Smyrniotis said of the Caps’ signing Müller. “He’s obviously an excellent player. He’s won every trophy that’s out there.
“But the game against Vancouver is not on our radar right now or even something we’re discussing. We’ve got the game at home Saturday (7 p.m.) against Valour and we have another one after that (at York, the following Saturday). So, we don’t even look at the next one beyond this Saturday.
“And that’s the same thing we’ll do with the Whitecaps. We play the Saturday afternoon before that game and late that afternoon we’ll start paying attention to Vancouver. Nothing before that, no different than any other opponent.”
That mental discipline goes a long way to explain why Forge has gone through all 16 CPL matches undefeated with nine wins and seven draws, and 19 in a row overall, counting Canadian Championship wins over HFX Wanderers and CF Montréal, plus the draw right in Montréal which delivered them into the semifinal.
Combine such in-the-moment focus with creative tactics, incisive coaching, veteran savvy, roster depth and the emergence of several young players and it adds up to the search for a 20th-straight undefeated match when Valour comes into Hamilton Stadium on Saturday.
Forge sits in second place just one point back of Atlético Ottawa, and nine up on third-place Cavalry FC, and 10 clear of York and the Wanderers. A win on Saturday not only keeps them on pace with Ottawa, but distances them from the rest of the playoff-bound pack.
They’ve allowed only a dozen goals, the league’s best mark, three stingier than Cavalry and four fewer than Ottawa, the only other teams under 20 goals conceded. They’re also just three back of league-leading Ottawa in goal differential.
Valour, meanwhile, is 10 points outside a playoff spot in sixth place but has started to play with more confidence and some success since losing 5-0 to Forge in Winnipeg in late June. They lost to the Whitecaps 2-1 in the second leg of their Canadian Championship semifinal, and 4-3 on aggregate, and after following that up with a tough 3-2 loss at York, have won their last two, 3-1 at Vancouver FC and 2-1 at home to Cavalry.
They are in playoff mode already, needing to win, win, win, which can make a club hungry and dangerous. Even on the road.
“They’re dangerous, as we are too,” says Smyrtniotis. “We have to win, win, win to make sure we’re staying at the top. We’re all coming from different directions. We’re past the midway part of the season, you’ve got two full games against every team in the league, and every point is just as important. Whatever you can pick up now is going to help you as you go into the stretch. We know we have two more against them, with one at home on Saturday, so we need to make sure we get maximum points.”
When Valour beat Cavalry on Sunday it was the first time in 359 days they’d won back-to-back CPL games. Both goals came off perfect curling left-footed corner kicks by Themi Antonoglou, one headed in by Zachary Fernandez and the other headed in by Myles Morgan. So Forge will have to be alert in the box and arrange their defences to win the aerial battles.
“They’ve got a few off the set pieces and it’s something that you’ll pay attention to,” Smyrniotis said. “But it’s more their general game. They’re a team that fights hard; they’re a team that goes after it. We’ve got to make sure we’re the aggressor at home, on the ball. That’s important in these games: that we be very good coming out of the gate; that we try to get an early goal because I think that changes the mood and the momentum of how games go. We got two early goals last time we played them and that gave us control. Sometimes we have to have a bit more of a killer instinct; sometimes when you’re more of a killer it allows you to dictate games more.”
Forge has got Tristan Borges and David Choinière back from injury and they were terrific off the bench in last Friday’s 2-0 win in Halifax. Outside back Elimane Cissé is practising and should return to active duty from long-term injury within a week or two, injured centre-back Malik Owolabe-Belewu might return in time for the second leg against the Caps and it’s possible, if not probable, that holding midfielder Ali Hojabrpour returns to the lineup for the first time since the 5-0 win over Valour in June. He’s missed eight of the last eleven games.
Hojabrpour is the Forge’s metronome, helping with defence while also speeding up and slowing down the attack according to what the game needs and dictates. He and Kyle Bekker are formidable in the middle tier and effective at two-way football.
“We’ve talked a lot about him over the years and what he can do,” Smyrniotis said of Hojabrpour. “We’ve done a great job without him….which means we’ll do an even better job with him.”
Hojabrpour says it’s been “a bit of an up-and-down season with the injuries but seeing the guys doing so well and now coming back into a good team is really exciting and I’m motivated to impact the team with whatever I can do to help.”
Of course, Hojabrpour’s imminent return swings the conversation right around to the Whitecaps again, because he grew up in Burnaby watching the Caps, and was part of their prospects program, starting in 2007 when he was seven years old. He was then selected for the Whitecaps Academy Residency, playing youth-level soccer for them until he was 16. He then left to play pro in Bulgaria before returning to join Pacific when the CPL launched in 2019.
“I didn’t see myself going quickly enough to the first team with the Whitecaps, playing enough professional minutes, so I moved on,” Hojabrpour said. “Maybe I was a little ambitious at the time but that was the decision I wanted to make then.
“I’ve played against the Whitecaps before when I was at Pacific and done well. It’s really just another game to prepare for, but a lot of friends and family know we’re playing in the Canadian Championships and that we’re going to play them there as well so maybe there’s a little more attachment, in it being in the city I’m from.
“I’ve matched up once before with them in this competition but this is a two-legged affair, with a different team.”
In August of 2021, the year they won the CPL title, Pacific eliminated the Whitecaps 4-3 in a single-game National Championship series. Hojabrpour played the whole game at midfield and the only three players on the Caps’ active lineup from that game who are still with Vancouver are Ryan Gauld, who scored two goals in that 2021, productive striker Brian White—who will certainly benefit from the addition of Müller—and star Serbian central-defender Ranko Veselinović, who was recently lost for the year with an ACL injury.
“They’re the best team in Canada right now,” Hojabrpour says. “They’re doing really well in the MLS. The last couple of years I think they’ve had a good team and this year it’s kind of clicking in terms of wins and goals. It’ll be a fun and exciting game at home, and to go there after that hopefully with a result in hand, it’s going to be interesting.”
Facing the Whitecaps will also be some motivation for two Forge defenders, the multi-faceted Dan Nimick who was drafted by Vancouver but opted for the CPL when he was sent down to the Caps’ second team and the fierce Owolabe-Belewu, who was born in London, England but moved to London, Ontario at the age of 13.
There, he played for a club — Whitecaps, London SC — which had a partnership with the Vancouver Whitecaps, who would bring talented age-class players out to the west coast on trial for the same official Whitecaps Academy residency program that Hojabrpour was part of.
“But they passed on me and I guess there’s a little bit of me that wants to prove that I was a talented player, and they made a mistake,” Owolabi-Belewu says. “But the biggest thing is going to be to take care of business as we have done. Not only me but everyone on this team wants to win the Canadian Championship. We came very, very close back in 2022 with the delayed final. If we can take care of this team we’ll be in a very good position to win the whole thing. It’ll be nice to play a different MLS opponent for once. We’ve normally played just the two teams in the east: Montréal and Toronto.”
And even with the splashy signing of Müller, the Forge aren’t at all reticent about facing a team with a payroll at least 10 times higher than the strict CPL salary cap. To a man, the Forge repeat the mantra that to be the best you have to beat the best.
“For sure,” Owolabi-Belewu nods. “And I’d say the Whitecaps are definitely the best MLS team in Canada this season.”
And they should be even better with Müller.