Hamilton loves Forge FC

Just five years ago, the CPL hadn’t kicked a ball, and was still preparing to dive into a marketplace prone to doubt about and apathy toward professional footy in this country. The three MLS teams had been making somewhat of an impact, softening the landing for Forge and their future league brethren, but domestic pro soccer was generally regarded by the sporting mainstream as more of a cult.

No longer.

Not after what Forge, arguably the New York Yankees of the CPL, and Cavalry FC, arguably the counterpoint Los Angeles Dodgers, have given us in the league’s first five seasons. Not after a tense, confrontational battle between two teams that can not even pretend to tolerate each other, resulted in Forge’s 2-1 victory with all the goals — each of them stunning — scored in the 30 minutes of what other sports call overtime. And not when the game attracted 13,925 paying customers, almost all of them local, and many of them youngsters.

“It’s unbelievable,” captain Kyle Bekker, the face of the team and of the league, said moments after the game, as the adrenalin of achievement still dripped from his every pore.

“I hope all the kids in this crowd are buzzing, I hope they’re dreaming about coming to play for this team and then going on to do bigger things.”

Forge has been in every CPL final, winning four of them, the lonely blemish a 1-0 loss to Pacific FC, the only previous time (2021) they played the title-deciding game at home. And 11 minutes into Saturday’s overtime it appeared that history would repeat itself as Cavalry’s Ali Musse drilled a screaming shot past Hamilton goalie Triston Henry. The game would not have reached overtime had Henry not made three stunning no-time-to-think saves in regulation, one of them off the foot of Musse.

The Calgary-based Cavalry had already won the regular season championship, finishing a gigantic 13 points up on Forge, and appeared to be heading for a trophy double, but Beni Badibanga, who did not join Forge until July, knotted it with a perfect high shot from Bekker’s preplanned short corner in extra time of the first overtime period. Then in the game’s 111th minute, Tristan Borges made the crowd completely crazy.

One of the Forge’s original six members still with the team and the first CPL player sold to a European side for big money back in 2019, Borges scored the memorable winner with a perfect “Olympico,” a soccer rarity in which a corner kick goes directly into the net rather than setting up another player’s chance. He was only a couple of metres from the braying mob known as the Barton Street Batallion, the perpetual noise machine supporter’s club that came into existence before the Forge did. And he ran over to acknowledge them, and his goal.

“Obviously in 15 or 20 years every team in the league is going to get a trophy, but when we look at what we’ve done — four of five trophies and finals every year — it’s unbelievable,” Borges said.

Of course it was decided by a single goal, one that is being shown on soccer highlight reels around the continent, particularly in Central America and the Caribbean where Forge is widely-known because of the 18 international matches they’ve played in their young history. Hamilton and Calgary have created a CPL updraft, meeting a stunning 26 times in various competitions over the league’s first five years and only two of those games have been decided by more than a one goal.

This was, until the last nine minutes of it, Cavalry’s year, but Forge got to them yet again.

It’s fitting, though, that both teams have qualified for the prestigious Champions Cup, Concacaf’s top club competition. On Dec. 13, they’ll find out who they play in the opening two-leg round and it could be a well-known side from MLS or Liga MX of Mexico. Miami FC is also in the competition, but Forge would have to win their opening round for any chance of meeting the team Lionel Messi has elevated to global status. Hamilton will host a first-round home game sometime in February.

With last year’s nearly 15,000 at Ottawa to see Forge beat Atlético for the title and league commissioner Mark Noonan this week confidently predicting expansion in 2025 and again in 2026, the CPL is definitely on the upswing. It certainly is in Hamilton where even those outside the sport have taken note of the city’s most successful, by far, elite team.

The city and Hamilton Sports Group, which owns both the Forge and Tiger-Cats, will host a public celebration for fans to share the North Star Cup at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday at Tim Hortons Field.

Several members of the Ticats who didn’t travel to Montreal for Saturday’s game were in attendance at the title game and at the very loud victory party in the stadium’s fourth-floor Hall of Fame room.

It means a lot to this community,” said Joel Figueroa, the Ticats’ veteran tackle who’s a diehard Manchester City fan. “Everybody are hard workers, they come home and they expect greatness for the whole city and these guys delivered. Hats off to Forge FC.

“I watch them out here every day working hard and it’s great to see their dreams and work ethic come to fruition.”