'Enjoying it while it lasts': Despite past CPL Finals success, Forge FC still loves a big occasion

It’s often said that the hardest thing isn’t to win, but it’s to keep on winning. 

Sometimes, everything can come together for a perfect season, one that culminates in a trophy. It’s never easy to do, but when it all goes well, it can lead to a perfect storm of success, especially if you catch teams by surprise. 

Once you win, however, that element of surprise disappears - teams will know who you are, and place a target on your back. 

Because of that, it makes Forge’s success so fascinating. Having won the first-ever North Star Cup in 2019, they’ve found a way to follow that up with a run that’s quite unprecedented in modern sport, as they’ve won three other North Star Cups to go along with two CPL Shields, and have been in all six CPL Finals now. 

Despite entering each year fielding questions of whether or not they can maintain the same level as the year prior, and if they can keep up as teams around them improve, they continue to raise their game, showing teams around the CPL that they remain the team to beat. 

Instead of getting weighed down by their own success, they use it to their advantage, and there’s no better example of that than the way they’ve approached this final, doing so with a very chill vibe, even despite having the chance of becoming the first CPL side to do a regular season and playoff double. 

“History just helps in the preparation and in the minds of the players, but the rest of it is just normal business, it's a game in front of us,” Forge head coach, Bobby Smyrniotis explained on Friday. “What's happened in the past is irrelevant when it comes to the actual game and the 90 minutes, what it does is it gives familiarity to the players, in the lead-up to the match, and then how you deal with certain situations in the game, but then each game is different from there.”

“This is a week where you play football because this is the last week of football together in a competitive way with the team for a while, and this team has accomplished a lot this year, but we're still hungry for a little bit more.”

At the same time, while Forge might have entered this final with a certain level of nonchalance, joking several times in their pre-match availability that they still have several trophies at home to celebrate if they come up short in this final, make no mistake - they’re hungry to win again. 

Alessandro Hojabrpour made sure to express that in his pre-match comments - despite becoming the first CPL player to win three straight North Star Cups (he and teammate Terran Campbell won in 2021 with Pacific FC before winning in 2022 and 2023 with Forge), he is just as hungry to win a fourth as he was his first - in fact, he arguably is hungrier than ever to win based on how he spoke on Friday. 

“I think when you win it, it motivates you a little bit more,” Hojabrpour offered. “You want that feeling over and over again, and when playing with such good players, you see the quality that we have, the opportunity that we have, you don’t want to do anything other than win, as it’s kind of contagious.

At the same time, while that hunger is there, Forge’s nonchalance can be an asset. For example, as they also noted, the success of their season doesn’t depend on this game - they’ve already won a trophy as 2024 CPL Shield winners and can look back at their participation in the 2024 Concacaf Champions Cup and a deep run in the 2024 Canadian Championship as big milestones.

Because of that, they can see this game as a great opportunity, instead of a be-all, end-all that determines how they judge this campaign.  

Ultimately, the path to the North Star Cup runs through them, and they know that no matter what happens, they’re going to fight until the end to defend it. 

“I don't think it's not a success when you leave after the last day and you haven't won that game,” Smyrniotis continued. “It's going to be disappointing, of course, but do we need to win the trophy tomorrow? No, we've got a few back at home, but we want to win this trophy, and for now, you have to go through Forge (to win it), and that's something we take a lot of pride in, that's why we're here. So it’s not as if we're going to be okay if things don't go well tomorrow, everyone in the room wants it, everyone in the room is ready for it, but there’s still been success this year.”

And until the road goes through somewhere else, they’re going to enjoy this feeling of being the team to beat. 

It’s not often that a player will play two finals in a row, let alone six, so Forge’s players are going to relish every opportunity to play in matches like this, no matter if they’ve been at the club for six years or six months. 

“I'm trying to enjoy it while it lasts, finals aren't guaranteed,” Forge’s day one captain and midfielder, Kyle Bekker, said. “I know it sounds like a broken record for us, but everyone (in the CPL) at the start of every single season has the same goal, we've just been very lucky to be in as many finals as we’ve been in, so I’m just looking to soak it all up.”