THE FINAL
Today 3.00 pm time Canadá
Calvary 1.00 pm time.
Forge fc vs Cavalry fc
The three-dimensional chess match that has come to define the Canadian Premier League will reach its 2024 endgame tomorrow afternoon in the shadow of the Alberta foothills.
For the 32nd time in six years, and second time in two weeks, Forge FC will engage Cavalry FC at ATCO Stadium at Spruce Meadows, just outside Calgary. Their rivalry is already historic, in a league whose history consists of a mere six seasons.
And when you’ve seen the opponent’s jerseys so often that you dream of them in technicolor, a championship game like this one—the third time Hamilton has tangled with Calgary in a CPL final, winning both (2019, 2023) previous times—there is only one idea that is front of mind.
“The most important thing is we’re just thinking about ourselves,” says Forge winger Nana Ampomah. “It doesn’t matter how we play, the most important thing is to win the game. That’s the mentality we have going into it. The only option is to win.”
Cavalry is in the same head space. They’ve had enough of having great efforts against the two-time defending champions who’ve been in each of the league’s six finals, winning four of the previous five. The regular season’s second-place finishers flexed their competitive muscles with a 1-0 win over first-place Forge at Tim Hortons Field two weeks ago, the first time they have ever beaten the Hammers in the playoffs and an important step, the Cavs hope, toward winning their first CPL title.
With that victory, Cavalry earned the right to stage the final at home, as Forge did last year when they won at Spruce Meadows to host the championship match which they won on Tristan Borges Olimpico in overtime. That would be the same Borges who last night was named the CPL Player of the Year, the same Borges who was named the Player of the Year in 2019 when the Forge also played the final game in Calgary (it was a two-game aggregate back then) and came away as champions.
The Forge are 6-1-1 against Cavalry in the playoffs, and 14-9-8 across all competitions in their six-year history of dramatic, and sometimes bitter games. But through those six years, Forge has scored a total of four more goals than Cavalry has, which speaks partly to the Hammers’ history of rising to the big occasion.
And this is a big occasion. They’re on the road, playing on a grass field, rather than turf, against a team which has been red-hot, is motivated by never having won a title, and has had an extra week to prepare. Home field advantage is usually huge in soccer, although Forge often spits in the face of that, having won championship games in Calgary and Ottawa, and eliminating CF Montréal from the Canadian Championships this year, right at Stade Saputo.
“The extra man,” is how Cavalry head coach Tommy Wheeldon Jr. describes what having home field in a big game can do for a side.
“The extra man can come in many ways. Your fans can become the extra man, and officiating can become an extra man. And if you get impartial officials and you get to have your fans there in the stadium then you’ve got the plus-one in these games. And they’re the kind of marginal gains you need. It’s a game of margins.”
Forge Head Coach and Sporting Director Bobby Smyrniotis says of Cavalry playing this game at home, “If you look at the external things, it’s the altitude. It’s noticeable as you get later into the game and it’s the one thing we don’t talk about enough, being an advantage. There is a difference. The field conditions are the other external factor.”
The Spruce Meadows’ pitch is a little shorter than Hamilton’s home grounds, but it’s recorded as the same width, although it can feel a little bit more cramped. And the pitch can have some ground frost, as it did earlier in the week, making the surface a little slippery and increasing the importance of the players choosing the best footwear for more reliable grip.
“These are single games,” Smyrniotis says. “It doesn’t matter what happened last week, it doesn’t matter what happened last year. Before last week it was ‘Can Cavalry win? They’ve never beaten Forge in the playoffs.’ And at some point that’s going to come … for everything. And it did.
“So, I never look at what’s happened before. It’s what is happening in front of us. We’re playing for a trophy, and we’ve played for a trophy at Tim Hortons Field, we’ve played for one in Ottawa, we’ve played for one on Prince Edward Island, and in Calgary. To me it doesn’t really make a difference. You always want to do it in front of your home crowd but there’s sometimes an excitement to playing away, that can also bring energy to the game.”
In earning a week’s bye, Cavalry bought some necessary time for physical recovery.
“You need the rest sometimes to give rest to the battered and bruised bodies,” Wheeldon says. “So, to have that weekend to rest and prepare was welcomed. You come to the end of the season and I don’t think any team is 100 per cent fit. It gave us an extra week to get some players back to full fitness.”
Forge, meanwhile, will have an important body back in the lineup. Wingback Daniel Parra, whose two-way game was missed in the loss to Calgary, has finished serving his three-game suspension and will play Saturday. He says he won’t be tempted to make up for his forced absence by trying to do too much in his return.
“When you try to do more than you can, it doesn’t work,” he said. ““Everything is about the mental part. To be ready. I think I can add that, be in a good mental situation and help my teammates be in a good mental situation.”
Because they had to arrive at the via the longer route of an extra elimination game, Forge has played 30 times this year, to Calgary’s 29, and the stats point to a marked difference in emphasis. The Cavs can be deadly on set pieces, although Forge can excel at them too, and generate a lot of their play from a very strong backfield. They surrendered a league-low 27 goals (Forge were second at 32) while Forge scored the most goals (46) in the league, six up on No. 3 Calgary.
Daan Klomp, the 6-foot-2 center back who’d considered retirement when his career treaded water in his native Netherlands four years ago, is the cornerstone of the Cavalry defense and much of the attack also starts with the rearguard. Klomp is among the league’s best all-round players and his 1653 passes rank fourth in the CPL, about 150 back of leader Alex Achinioti-Jönsson of Forge.
“Obviously Klomp,” Dom Samuel, who was excellent at central defender in Forge’s 1-0 semi-final win over Ottawa, answers when asked about dangerous Cavalry players to watch.
“When they go forward you kind of forget about him because he’s a center back, but he likes to get into those areas as well, especially when the ball is in the air. And there’s Tobi (Golden Boot winner Tobias Warschewski). And (Sergio) Camargo is sneaky, very sneaky. He likes to get in the good areas, especially on the attack. He’s a secondary guy on the set pieces.”
With a solid back line and veteran goalkeeper Marco Carducci leading the league in clean sheets, the Cavs’ defense can be hard to break down. But so can Forge’s when they’re fully focused. And it helps that goalkeeper Jassem Koleilat is coming off what was essentially a game-winning performance in the semifinal where he demonstrated his ability to punch away balls and his improving sense of when to aggressively challenge for balls dropped into the box…a tactic all teams like to employ against Forge.
“It’s part of my game I knew I had to develop,” he said of intercepting crosses and lobs. “I think it’s gotten better over the years, especially over the course of this season. In our league, especially in a playoff game, set pieces are huge. So crosses and set pieces are something we have to have locked down as goalkeepers. I think we showed that last game.
“I think last game gave me a lot of confidence: as a player and as well the guys know that if the backline can get the job done the guys in front of us are going to get the opportunity to put the ball in the back of the net, Whether it’s individual or a team effort it gives you confidence going into a game.”
In an echo of last year when Cavalry’s victory in the second semifinal ensured that both teams had already qualified for the February’s Champions Cup, rather than having to win the final to get a berth, the two sides are again headed to the top club competition in North and Central America and the Caribbean.
“The more repetitions we can have in big moments the better,” says Wheeldon, who counts Saturday as a big moment, of course. “We wanted a Cup run, compete against an MLS club in the Canadian Championships and we did that, losing in extra time (to Vancouver Whitecaps), and a chance to get into a playoff final again.
“We needed more big-game repetition. K.J. (Kristian Jack of CPL.ca and OneSoccer) wrote that Forge has had 50 of those games and we’ve had 29. So we’ve got some catching up to do in big games and–regardless of who we’re playing–if you want to be the best you’ve got to beat the best. And the best this season has been Forge. So it’s up to us now to challenge for that title.”
HAMMERS AND NAILS: The CPL kicks off at 3 p.m. ET (CBC-TV, OneSoccer) and the Barton Street Battalion’s watch party begins at 1 p.m. at Endzone Bar & Grill at 1035 Main St. E. … Tristan Borges was named the CPL Player of the Year last night, while Kwasi Poku, despite being in Europe since early August, was named the CPL’s U-21 player of the year…and in his sixth nomination Bobby Smyrniotis was finally named as the Coach of the year for the first time. The 2024 CPL awards gala concluded with three award winners for Forge FC. Report by Maria Ocampo.
