| Final Score: Vancouver FC 0-1 Forge FC Goalscorers: Babouli 45+1' Game of the 2025 season: 78 CPL Match: 673 |
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Match in a minute or less
Forge's chase for a perfect CPL season continues, as they defeated Vancouver FC 1-0 at Willoughby Community Park on Friday to extend their unbeaten run in league play to 20 games.
After a mostly quiet first stanza, Forge nabbed a goal at the perfect time, as Mo Babouli headed home from a perfect Hoce Massunda cross in the first minute of first-half stoppage time to put his team up 1-0.
From there, Forge did well to survive a late Vancouver push for an equalizer, holding on for their sixth straight win, one that could push them to become the first CPL team to clinch a playoff spot this year - something they can do this weekend if Pacific fails to win on Sunday.
Three Observations
Forge stays hot as they hit 20 unbeaten in CPL play:
With each game that they play, Forge continues to reach uncharted territory as they navigate what's been a historic campaign to date.
No matter the opponent or the location, they come into every match they play expecting to win, and to their credit, they've backed up that sentiment with their results.
In particular, what's been most impressive has been their ability to avoid falling into the trap that teams can sometimes have over a long season, too, where it can be hard to stay concentrated for matches like this.
Ultimately, in the grand scheme of things, this is the exact match that can trip up teams, as it can be hard for a team in the title race to get up for a match against a team that's at the bottom of the table. Coming off a big win against second-place Atlético Ottawa, who they beat 2-0 last week to carve out a four-point lead in the race for the CPL Shield, it was always going to be hard to keep that momentum going in this match.
Not for this Forge team, though. Fuelled by the desire to finish the season without a defeat, they've managed to avoid the late summer slump that can often afflict teams in their position, as they're instead tackling each of these games like a final.
As a result, they're seemingly getting better every week, as evidenced by the fact that they've now won six straight league matches - it's not as if they're extending this unbeaten run by grinding out ugly draws every week.
To be fair, this wasn't as if this was their most sparkling performance - as expected, Vancouver caused them all sorts of trouble on the day, as they continue to find their feet under interim head coach Martin Nash, who has sparked this team thanks to an identity shift since his arrival.
When it came down to it, though, Forge knew how to navigate this game and did what they needed to claim a victory against this plucky Vancouver team, doing so thanks to a timely goal and some strong defensive play.
That's been the story of Forge's season, however. When they've needed to, they've shown that they can turn up the gears and take it to a team - to that point, their victory against Ottawa might've been their best and most complete performance, and it came in what might've been their biggest CPL match up until this point.
Yet, when they've also had to navigate matches where they might not be at their best, for whatever reason - in this one, they were pretty tired after a busy week and a long trip - and still find a way to win. That's been the biggest factor behind this streak, and they'll now hope to continue that en route to a second straight CPL Shield, before building on that in the playoffs, where they'll have revenge on their minds after falling to Cavalry in last year's CPL final (and don't forget their aspirations in the Canadian Championship, where they sit tied at 2-2 on aggregate with the three-time defending champions, the Vancouver Whitecaps, heading into leg two of the semi-finals next month).
Fitting, in a sense, that their next match is a trip to face Cavalry in the same stadium where they lost last year's final, in a match that should have some extra juice in it, given that it's their first visit to the stadium since that defeat.
"It's quite something," Forge's head coach, Bobby Smyrniotis, said of this win. "You can see the excitement on the guys' faces, too, at the end of the game. Okay, I think it's more for the three points we got, of course, but it's also for what they're doing this season."
Vancouver left frustrated by another poorly timed goal against:
Overall, it's hard for Vancouver to feel too disappointed with how this match went, as they did well to keep Forge mostly at bay on the night.
Not only did Vancouver keep Forge to just one goal, the first time they'd scored less than two goals since early July, but they also put the league leaders under real pressure at the end of the game as they chased an equalizer.
In the end, though, despite a good performance, Vancouver left this match with nothing to show for it, leaving them 15 points adrift of a playoff spot, a gap that could extend to 18 by the end of the matchday.
Plus, what will frustrate them most is that the goal that they conceded was the exact sort of marker they've been trying to weed out of their game, too. Not only was it a goal that came from a moment where they lost concentration, as they failed to track the dangerous run of Forge's Mo Babouli into the box, but they had that lapse right before half time.
As most coaches will tell you, while it's never ideal to concede goals, the worst time to do so is at the beginning and end of halves, and Vancouver's struggled with that all year long.
Just in their last match, a 5-4 thriller with Cavalry, they conceded two goals in the first five minutes of the match, and then twice after the 88th minute (while giving up the winner in the 90+7th minute) to fall on the day.
Because of that, it'll frustrate them that just a week later, they gave up another untimely goal, as it would've been fascinating to see what they could've done in the second half had the match still been 0-0 at that point. Given that they weren't actually too happy with how they played in the first half, they felt they could've hit another gear in the second stanza.
Instead, they came out of the break needing to chase the match, and that's often proven to be a futile exercise for teams in that situation against this Forge team, who have now won 13 times when scoring first in CPL play this year (something they've done in 15 games for context). Essentially, as seen by that statistic, when Forge scores first, they tend to win, as they're usually good enough defensively to see things over the line - there's a reason why they've conceded just 13 goals in 20 games, keeping their 10th clean sheet of the season in this match.
To Vancouver's credit, though, they still made a game out of this, as they made sure to push Forge's defence right until the very end, instead of letting them pull away with a second goal.
In particular, Vancouver will be pleased that six of their highest xG chances all came in the second half, including a 0.7 xG effort from Terran Campbell that they'll want back, as he was unable to convert a massive chance that Kunle Dada-Luke created for him with a perfect cross.
Naturally, those are the exact plays you can't afford to not execute against Forge, but for a Vancouver team still in metamorphosis, they'll be pleased that they went down swinging - to that point, they generated 1.2 xG off eight second-half shots, which is not bad at all considering the game state.
All of a sudden, this team is showing great growth offensively - four of their seven best xG performances of 2025 have come since Nash's arrival (for context, this was his fifth game behind Vancouver's bench in CPL play), with this one ranking as their seventh-best effort of the year - showing why they won't be as frustrated not to find the net for the first time in a game under their interim manager.
Now, they'll want to shut things down defensively, but they'll hope growth in that area only comes with time, something they'll feel optimistic can happen when seeing their offensive transformation.
"You always want to do the best you can, so it's tough when certain things happen and repeat themselves," Vancouver defender, Matteo Campagna, said after the match. "As a defender, you want to keep a clean sheet; you don't want to concede goals."
"So these goals hurt, but there are many different factors that play into it, and we've established that as a team, it's not just the back four, it's not the goalkeeper - there are things that we all need to get better at."
Wide success allows Forge to nab goal, win:
As mentioned earlier, it was far from a vintage attacking performance from Forge, but in the end, as they've been all season, they were clinical when they needed to be, and that proved to be crucial.
What they'll like, too, is that their goal came off the exact sort of action they've been so good at all year long, too, as they do a great job of creating overloads out wide and flooding the box with numbers.
In this case, Hoce Massunda did well to find some space out wide before whipping a ball towards the box, where Mo Babouli was able to capitalize on the space Brian Wright had vacated for him with a perfect header at the back post.
The goal didn't come off some intricate play or any moments of magic, but instead, the simple execution of a routine attacking action.
That's huge, because their ability to regularly execute those sorts of actions has given them a real weapon to use in games where they're facing lower blocks, and while Vancouver weren't necessarily sitting back and asking Forge to run at them, this was still a game where Forge had 55.9% of possession.
For a team that's now scored a league-leading 38 goals, that helps explain how they've been so consistent with their goalscoring, as they've been held off the scoresheet just once, coming in a 0-0 draw with the Halifax Wanderers at Wanderers Grounds on May 3rd.
Thanks to their ability to get numbers in the box and put defences under pressure, it's hard for most teams to sit back against them, as they'll usually bend and break in that quest to offer resistance to Forge's attack.
At the same time, it's not as if opponents can just adjust by playing with more of an aggressive defensive line, either - Forge can be quite dangerous from counter-attacking situations, too, as they do a great job of getting in behind defences.
That helps explain their offensive success this year, however - they know what areas of the field to attack, and when to hit them. As a result, they sit with 35.83 non-penalty xG, almost five ahead of second-place Atlético Ottawa (who still has to play this weekend, to be fair), showing that their offensive success isn't coming from a wild hot streak or anything of the sort, as they're generating the right chances.
From there, thanks to their loaded attack, they can also execute those final third actions, and they did that in the right moment in this game, allowing them to pick up the victory.
"If you keep on repeating the right things, then you're always going to have a positive result when you're trying to score goals in a match," Smyrniotis offered. "We got into those areas, and maybe we didn't have all the pieces to the formula, but with the goal we scored, we (got) what we needed."
What They Said
"Every component of the game that you can bring something positive out of is important. We talk about the three points, another game where we're unbeaten, all of that, it's great for the confidence of the players, it gives them another positive week as they get prepared for the next one, it keeps that great environment going. But it's not all about the three points, it's also about all of the little different factors that go into it, those contributions from different players." -- Forge FC head coach Bobby Smyrniotis
"We know we can score goals, so as long as we keep teams off the scoresheet, we give ourselves a better opportunity to win. These away games aren't always going to be easy, so sometimes we'll have to see out a 1-0 win, and that's what happened in this one." -- Forge forward Mo Babouli
"The games came thick and fast, we haven't had a ton of training sessions, so we've done a lot of video - individual video and team video - trying to show guys what I want. I didn't want to come in here and ask guys to sit in a 5-4-1 and hit on the counter, I want the guys to play more aggressively. We had to be a bit more pragmatic today and not completely open up, but I wanted the guys to have fun, to enjoy playing football. I didn't want to come in and just be a defensive coach and play just for results; I want to improve the team, improve the group and try to get better every week." -- Vancouver FC interim head coach Martin Nash
CanPL.ca Player of the Match
Alexander Achinioti-Jönsson, Forge FC
It was a good game for all of Forge's backline, to be fair, but Achinioti-Jönsson did well to step up and earn this honour, in particular.
His numbers speak for themselves - on the ball, he completed 65 out of 72 passes (90%), including nine into the final third and seven out of 11 long balls, and then he was even better defensively, making three tackles, four clearances and three recoveries to go along with a perfect seven out of seven won duels as he helped his side keep a valuable clean sheet.
What’s next?
Vancouver will head east for their next match, as a date with Atlético Ottawa awaits them at TD Place on Saturday, August 30th (4:00 p.m. PT/7:00 p.m. ET). Meanwhile, Forge will travel to Alberta for a date with Cavalry FC at ATCO Field earlier that same Saturday (2:00 p.m. MT/4:00 p.m. ET).
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