Deeply-rooted soccer fans have no problem understanding how important the TELUS Canadian Championships are to the game in this country and, more specifically, this city. They’re accustomed to watching, and keeping straight, their favourite teams and players being part of more than one high-stakes competition in a season, especially if they’re a top side which—and make no mistake about this—Forge FC is.
But those new to the game, or who are casual fans, might not understand soccer’s long-standing traditions of playing for a national title or of playing in Concacaf Champions Cup while you’re still in the regular season of your own league. It’s not a concept embraced by pro leagues in North America, where we tend to like things distinctly linear—exhibition games followed by the regular season and playoffs, then see ya ’til next year—although the NBA and, sometimes, Major League Baseball are starting to warm up to the idea.
And Hamilton fans should warm up to the 2025 Canadian Championships because the Hammers have reached the semi-finals, hosting the first game of a two-leg home-and-home series on Wednesday Aug. 13 against the three-time national champion Vancouver Whitecaps, who are enjoying the greatest season in their 15-year tenure in Major League Soccer. The Caps are the only remaining MLS team in the tournament as Forge eliminated CF Montréal for the second straight year as part of their magnificent, to-date undefeated 2025 spring and summer.
What Forge is doing this year can’t be overstated; it’s enormous. After Friday night’s 2-1 victory over fourth-place Halifax they’re two games into the second half of their CPL season and still have not lost. Nine wins and seven draws. Sixteen times, without a single check in the L box. A CPL record they keep extending. Actually, it’s 19 without a loss, because they’ve also got two wins and a draw in Canadian Championship play.
Forge knocked off Montréal, who had eliminated Toronto FC, and after a blind draw for the remaining semi-finalists, the surging Caps will play Forge, who entered the weekend one point out of first place in the CPL, while the other semi-final is an all-CPL affair with league-leading Atlético Ottawa and last-place Vancouver FC squaring off.
So there will be at least one CPL team in the national final—Forge is the only one ever to make it that far, in the delayed 2020 title played in 2022—and, perhaps, league officials hope, two from the seventh-year domestic premier league.
At stake is the Voyageurs Cup for national supremacy, which is a worthwhile target in itself, but far more significant is the automatic berth into Concacaf Champions Cup, and all that international exposure, that goes with it. Forge played in the Cup against CF Monterrey back in the winter.
Most soccer nations have some version of this tournament: where pro teams from all levels have a chance to play against each other, and it often produces memorable upsets. Top teams might find themselves in a race for their own league title, while also playing against a team from a lower-rated league in the same week, while also playing other tournaments. That’s how Bayern Munich could win a record five trophies in 2012-13 and how Canadian superstar Alphonso Davies won three with Bayern five years ago.
The Canadian championships were once an unofficial event organized by The Voyageurs, supporters of the men’s national teams. It involved teams which played in USL-1 and the results were taken from regular-season games with the top record getting the trophy and some kind of bragging rights.
Things began changing when TFC was formed and joined the U.S.-based premier league MLS in 2007, followed by Vancouver and Montréal moving up from second-tier US leagues in 2011 and 2012 respectively.
When the CPL debuted in 2019, to become Canada’s internationally-accredited elite domestic league, all its teams were allowed to participate in the national championship.
The tournament is organized by Canada Soccer and now includes 15 teams: the three Canadian MLS sides, all eight CPL teams, and the champions of League1 Ontario, League1 B.C., Ligue1 Québec and League1 Alberta.
The preliminary round is a single knockout, and Forge beat HFX Wanderers 3-1 to advance to meet Montréal in the quarter-finals which, like the semis, are two-game sets. Hamilton won 1-0 in the opener way back in May then tied Montreal 2-2 at Stade Saputo two weeks ago to advance to face the Whitecaps. The second match will be in Vancouver in September.
The Hammers have had by far the toughest row to hoe in this tournament as, following the draw to determine semi-final pairings, they have been grouped with all three teams from the MLS, with payrolls multiple times higher than the CPL’s salary cap, and without some of the domestic-player roster limitations that CPL and League1 teams must hold to.
But, Forge players insist, that’s what they like. “To be the best you have to beat the best,” players like team captain Kyle Bekker say.
And the Whitecaps are among the best on the continent right now. They’ve won the last three national tournaments, beating Toronto FC in 2022 and ‘24, and CF Montréal in 2023. They sit second in the MLS West, just one point back of first-place San Diego with a game in hand and they held San Diego to a 1-1 draw last weekend in California before the all-star break.
For the first time in franchise history they had four players named to the all-star game, which was played against Liga MX all-stars on Wednesday night in Austin, Texas: Keeper Yohei Takaoka was a coach’s selection; and defender Tristan Blackman, midfielder Sebastian Berhalter and forward Brian Wright were all voted onto the team. Wright scored the insurance goal in the 3-1 victory over the Mexican selects.
But the Caps suffered a devastating loss last weekend when Serbian centre-back Ranko Veselinović tore his ACL against San Diego and is gone for the season.
However, they still have plenty of talent: Wright has 11 goals to rank 11th in the MLS; Ecuadorian Pedro Vite has six assists, J.C. Ngando of Cameroon has five; and Canadian midfielder Jeevan Badwal and defender Belal Halbouni—who played League1 Ontario for London and also for Western—both have 93 per cent passing accuracy. That was the same precision percentage as Veselinović had before he was sidelined.
Forge’s talented centre-back Malik Owolabi-Belewu will be motivated against Vancouver. He moved from England to London, Ontario at the age of 13 and played for Whitecaps London, a Vancouver Whitecaps Academy.
Hamilton native Ryan Raposo misses the opportunity to return to his hometown for a major match. After a very successful five years with the Caps, he is now with Los Angeles FC.
Forge, meanwhile, continues to gain stature. In Halifax, one of the toughest places to play in the CPL, both of their goals were scored by homegrown first-year CPLers: Ben Paton, who came over from the Scottish Premiership with the opener and 2025 draft choice Maxime Filion with the winner. After early-season issues putting the ball in the net, in their 10 games during June and July—including the draw with Montréal—they outscored teams 23-10 and won seven while drawing three. In league play they took 21 of 27 possible points.
But while interest in Forge is growing steadily, they’re still not as celebrated in this city as they should be. Arguably, their four titles and six straight visits to their league finals are the most successful stretch in the history of Hamilton pro sports. But they are better known in Central America, Mexico and many American MLS cities than they are in parts of Hamilton.
The home game in August against the Whitecaps, currently the best Canadian team in men’s soccer, should help raise the Hammers’ profile higher. It should be well-attended; Forge players and coaches deserve for it to be well-attended. Summer soccer in the city: featuring the country’s two most accomplished teams. It is, so far, the biggest game of the year—and given Forge’s prolific history, that’s saying something.