How appropriate that while Forge FC continues making waves, along comes the Whitecaps.
Wednesday night, it’s the biggest game of the year in Canadian men’s club soccer as the country’s two best teams square off in the opening leg of the TELUS Canadian Championship semifinal.
Vancouver Whitecaps are flowing along in second place of the West Division of Major League Soccer, enjoying the most successful season they’ve had since joining the U.S.-based premier league 14 years ago and signalling that they’re dead serious about winning the league championship, and the national title, with the recent signing of German Thomas Müller who is one of the 21st Century’s best players, anywhere in the world.
From the outset of the 2025 season, they’ve been heavily favoured to win the national title and become just the second team (joining Toronto FC) to win four straight Canadian championships.
Forge acknowledges all of that but counters with a bit of its history. Four CPL titles, trips to the league finals in all six seasons the Canadian Premier League has existed, two straight quarter-final wins over MLS’s CF Montréal, and a home victory last year over TFC, the country’s other MLS side.
Plus, of course, the dizzying run they’re on in the CPL: undefeated since the start of the season, a streak which reached 18 with a 2-1 victory in Toronto over York United Saturday afternoon; first place by one point over Ottawa, and 14 points ahead of third-place Cavalry; goals from 15 different players; a league-leading eight clean sheets from sophomore goalkeeper Jassem Koleilat; fewest goals allowed, second-most scored, and the CPL’s top goal-differential at +22.
Add the two wins and a draw, which brought them to the cusp of this Canadian Championship semi-final, they’re up to 21 games –and counting—without a loss.
Against Vancouver, the Hammers will face their stiffest challenge since February’s Champions Cup. Müller gives the Caps not only a physical lift but a spiritual one; the players know that the ownership and management, who traditionally haven’t spent big, are willing to put their wallets where their expectations are. He scored eight goals and added eight assists last year for Bayern Munich, with whom he won 13 Bundesliga titles, two Champions League crowns, and eight German Super Cups while also winning a World Cup with the national team. At 35, he's no longer young, and his game, called ‘Raumdeuter’, meaning ‘space interpreter’, does not calcify as rapidly as other styles do, because it’s not based mainly on speed and power. And the Caps are deep enough with attackers like Brian White - a top-10 scorer in the MLS with 12 goals, six behind leader Lionel Messi—Ali Ahmed, Jayden Nelson, and Emmanuel Sabbi—that he can arrive at the business end of the pitch slightly behind them as an attacking midfielder, winger, or second striker.
It's not known when he’ll make his first appearance, but he didn’t sign with the Caps not to play: Vancouver wants his on-field skills, and not just his marketing appeal, is what drew him to Canada’s west coast.
With the hiring of Danish coach Jesper Sørensen in January, Vancouver has undergone a dramatic turnaround despite not making a plethora of player changes.
They’ve morphed into a legitimate challenger for the MLS championship after finishing eighth in their conference and 14th overall last season.
“They’re a very organized team,” says Forge head coach Bobby Smyrniotis. “You can tell they have a new coach who’s got his systems in place and has the guys in place on both sides of the ball. That always makes it interesting.
“But on our end, it also gives us a clear picture of who they are and what we can expose, like we try to do with every team.
“Brian Wright is a guy up top who turns half-chances into goals in and around the ball. They’ve got good players all around the park: they’re busy and their collective is what makes them very good.”
As is Forge’s. They’ve got the veteran core, which has been central to the championship seasons and the surreal first-half-plus of this one, and have carefully developed numerous skilled young players as well. Nana Ampomah is exhibiting his considerable elite-tier skills, the backline has been like Kevlar, and veteran captain Kyle Bekker, who on Wednesday will become just the second player, after teammate Alex Achinioti-Jönsson, to play 200 games in a CPL kit, has been superb in multiple facets of the game.
Forge players respect the season the Whitecaps are stringing together, but are in no way overawed. This is not their first Underdog Rodeo.
The Whitecaps, after a quick start to the season, struggled through a 10-game stretch beginning in May when they took just 12 of a possible 20 MLS points and lost the Concacaf Champions Cup final 5-0 to Cruz Azul, a name familiar to Forge fans.
But they’ve won two and drawn another in their last four games, and their only loss was an upset in San Jose Saturday night, when they were reduced to 10 men for the final 60-plus minutes after a debatable red card to defender Édier Ocampo.
Vancouver has incurred some key injuries, losing captain Ryan Gould to a knee injury in March, but last year’s team scoring leader is expected back soon. Two other key players aren’t though: centre-back Ranko Veselinović suffered an ACL tear in July, and Canadian left-back Sam Adekugbe tore his Achilles tendon in June, and neither will be available again this season.
And just three weeks ago, Ecuadorian midfielder Pedro Vite, the club’s leading assist-deliverer, was sold to Mexican side Pumas UNAM.
But as Smyrniotis pointed out, the Whitecaps, with a player budget about 10 times what Forge has, still boast depth and talent in every position. And they’ve completely bought into Sørensen’s possession game, revolving around a deliberate build-up.
Wright scored two goals in the 2022 national semifinals and added a goal in both the 2022 and 2023 final; 24-year-old American midfielder Sebastian Berthalter has evolved into one of the best two-way players at his position in the MLS, wheel-housing the attack and contributing five goals and seven assists; and Canadian winger Jayden Nelson has one-on-one skills cutting inside or drifting outside to add spice to the otherwise scripted offence.
Stalwart Forge defender Dan Nimick will be motivated, playing against the club that decided he wasn’t good enough for their system, and his backline partner, Malik Owolabi-Belewu, played for the Caps’ affiliated youth program in London, Ontario.
And Hamilton midfielder Ali Hojabrpour was in the Whitecaps Academy system until 2017, and this will be his second Canadian Championship game against them. In the first, his Pacific FC side surprised the Caps 4-3 on Vancouver Island, in 2021, the same year Pacific edged Forge for the CPL title on Hojabrpour’s winner.
“Hopefully we can have another success,” Hojabrpour told CPL.ca. “This time with a different team.”
At stake in the two-game series - the second leg is in Vancouver Sept. 16 - is a berth in the single-game final. And the winner of that final gets an automatic berth in the Champions Cup.
These are two teams worth watching, and neither takes the other lightly. Support for Forge has been growing in the local market and - even aside from the quality of Wednesday’s opponent - deserves a good crowd for the unprecedented, and vastly entertaining, season they’ve delivered so far.