| Final Score: Atlético Ottawa 1-1 Forge FC Goalscorers: Tabla 90+3'; Bekker 9' Game of the 2025 season: 52 CPL Match: 648 |
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Match in a minute or less
Atlético Ottawa have held on to top spot in the Canadian Premier League, as they salvaged a point in stoppage time for a 1-1 draw with Forge FC at TD Place.
Forge took the lead early, when the ball fell nicely for Kyle Bekker to smash home less than 10 minutes in. After that, the home side surged forward with an overwhelming possession advantage, but it seemed that the well-organized Forge were not going to break.
Finally, though, Ottawa found a way to score. They won a penalty deep in added time of the second half, as Rezart Rama brought down Atleti wing-back Joaquim Coulanges in the air. Ballou Tabla buried the penalty, and the home side rescued a draw.
So, Atlético remain one point above Forge for first place in the CPL, as they officially lead the charge at the halfway mark of the season.
Forge, meanwhile, are now unbeaten in their first 14 games of the season, tying their own CPL record from 2019. They'll look to break that record on Friday against Pacific.
Three Observations
Atlético stay patient, steal a point at the death
This match was a difficult one for Atlético Ottawa, and it had a very different pace to the last game they played against Forge in May, where both sides were moving the ball a little quicker.
Instead, this game was a case of Ottawa repeatedly knocking at the door against a Forge side doing its very best to turn them away. For a long time, it looked like the Hammers were going to be successful in doing so.
Eventually, though, they broke, albeit not in open play. Bobby Smyrniotis and Forge will be annoyed that they let two points slip away with an individual error, though they too had chances to score a second goal and didn't capitalize.
Ottawa coach Diego Mejía may not be thrilled with his team's performance; they were a little more disjointed than usual, and often wasteful with the ball. Knowing that they wouldn't be able to create many great opportunities, the attempts they did take weren't dangerous enough — particularly their shots from distance, which rarely even found the target.
Still though, this is an ambitious Ottawa team that wants to be the top dog in the CPL this year. To do that, these are games where they need results. Perhaps not playing at their best level, against an undefeated Forge team, they found a way to hold on to first place.
Mejía spoke earlier this week about how if you want to be the best, you have to beat the best — that is, Forge. Ottawa didn't manage to do that on Saturday, but through two games now they've refused to allow Forge to beat them.
If these sides are still fighting one another for the CPL Shield come the end of the season, these draws between them will be part of the reason it's so close.
Forge surprise with new-look back three
Over the years, Forge have always been a tactically fluid team, where players line up in a variety of positions and interchange with one another in the course of a game. However, it's been rare to see them play in a back three formation.
That's how Bobby Smyrniotis set up his team on Saturday, with a trio of Malik Owolabi-Belewu, Dan Nimick and Alex Achinioti-Jönsson across the back. That allowed the wing-backs, Ben Paton on the left and Rezart Rama on the right, to stay wider and play further up the pitch — which directly resulted in Forge's goal in the first half; Paton's license to go forward put him in such a good position to bring down Noah Jensen's long ball.
In defence, Forge were able to neutralize Ottawa's dynamic attack by matching their numbers. Atleti have been dangerous this year when they overwhelm defences by throwing five men forward — the three attackers plus both wing-backs — to create numerical overloads. By having five in defence, Forge could essentially man-mark going backward and prevent Atlético from getting behind them with quick give-and-go plays.
Unfortunately for Smyrniotis, he didn't quite get to see his plan all the way through. Forge had two players — Khadim Kane and Owolabi-Belewu — go down with injury in the first half, which meant he had to adjust his system, though he retained the back three, swapping Rama into the right centre-back slot with Zayne Bruno at right wing-back.
It's not just the formation shift that allowed Forge to keep Atlético Ottawa mostly at bay in this match, though. Part of their game plan semeed to be allowing Ottawa to control possession, while Forge set up a rigid defensive shape behind the ball.
Atleti have often ripped teams apart this year by starting their attacks from deep and playing quickly along the flanks, getting between an opponent's defensive lines before they can reset. Forge countered that in this match by forcing Ottawa to carry the ball forward more slowly, with a wall of orange shirts converging around their own penalty area.
At times, it seemed as though Forge had three or four more players on the pitch than Ottawa, such was their ability to always have multiple players in position to defend.
They did, eventually, break, in that crushing moment at the end, but there was a lot to like in the way Forge committed to their defending, despite having played a demanding game in Montréal just a few days ago.
Outstanding goalkeeping duel pits two possible award candidates head-to-head
Forge's Jassem Koleilat and Atlético Ottawa's Nathan Ingham might be the top two goalkeepers in the CPL at the moment, and both showed why on Saturday.
Each keeper made five saves, of varying quality; Koleilat got his hands on a variety of Ottawa attempts, including a Noah Abatneh rocket from distance and one effort in close where he had to display outstanding reflexes to keep it out.
Ingham, meanwhile, found himself in a handful of one-on-one situations and showed his athleticism with a few incredible diving saves.
Koleilat and Ingham are first and second in the CPL (among regular starters) in save percentage, with 75.6 and 75.0 per cent, respectively. The Forge goalkeeper has a league-leading six clean sheets, and Ingham is second in the CPL in saves with 48.
Goalkeepers can fly under the radar sometimes in attack-minded teams like these, neither of which typically gives up much defensively either. However, both are critical to their team's success. Defenders can play freer and with more confidence when they trust their goalkeeper entirely, and that's undoubtedly the case in Hamilton and Ottawa.
Ingham in particular has a key role for Atleti, because of his leadership value organizing the very young back three in front of him. With the likes of Loïc Cloutier, Noah Abatneh and Sergei Kozlovskiy making up the defensive line, Ingham as a veteran is very important to ensuring they're occupying the correct spaces.
On Saturday, Ingham made his 86th CPL appearance for Atlético Ottawa, which ties him with Ollie Bassett for the club's most all-time. He has been a constant at the back for this club for four years now, and this year is arguably playing the best football of his career.
"We have a huge amount of confidence that he's going to come up once or twice big in games and save us," Ottawa midfielder Manny Aparicio said postmatch. "That means we can risk a little more late in the game; we were basically playing with two centre-backs and everyone brought forward. If you don't have a goalkeeper behind you that you can trust, you can't do that."
Koleilat, meanwhile, has fully solidified himself as Forge's number one and, when healthy, is surely one of the first names on Bobby Smyrniotis's team sheet.
At this point, it would be a shock if both of these two weren't nominated for Goalkeeper of the Year come October.
What They Said
"If we can keep on not losing, every point counts. At the end of the season, this point might be the deal-breaker. It's moments like these that you dig in and get a point out of something that almost seemed like it was gone." -- Atlético Ottawa midfielder Manny Aparicio
"When you look at the game, I think one team thinks we deserved three points, and the other team deserved the one point coming out of it. It was a tough week, you have to look at the circumstances. Ottawa played midweek as well, but one day earlier, for 80 minutes against 10 men; it's a much different physical process to what we endured in Montréal on Wednesday. We took a different tactical approach. We had a couple guys that were beaten up coming out of that game, so we changed things up, and to be honest it worked quite well for us." -- Forge FC head coach Bobby Smyrniotis
CanPL.ca Player of the Match
Kyle Bekker, Forge FC
The Forge captain picked up where he left off in Montréal with another excellent performance. Not only did he provide the opening goal, he was excellent in midfield as well, winning three of five duels and making a team-high 13 passes in the final third.
What’s next?
Both Forge and Ottawa are at home next Friday, July 18 at 7 p.m. ET. Forge will host Pacific FC at Hamilton Stadium, while Atleti take on the Halifax Wanderers at TD Place.
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