Hamilton advances to CONCACAF semifinals
Penalty kick in extra time keeps Forge FC in contention for title
This is getting really serious now.
Of course, Forge FC has always been serious and that single-mindedness keeps showing up in the dying minutes of the biggest games, as it did again Tuesday night in Panama City.
The Road Warriors from Hamilton extended their improbable soccer run and live to play a least two more CONCACAF League games, after Daniel Krutzen’s penalty-kick goal early in extra time gave them a 2-1 victory over No. 1 seed Tauro FC.
Forge has been building a reputation for winning or clinching critical games when the clock ticks down and fatigue is supposed to be ticking up. With a shootout ominously looming to decide Tuesday’s match, Hamilton added to that reputation with a sudden emphasis.
“There’s probably a million ways to describe it but, to say the very least, it’s very exciting and we’re very proud,” said Forge FC striker Mo Babouli, who scored just 11 minutes into the game before the home team tied it seven minutes later, dressing the long, tense stage for the drama of the waning moments.
“We showed a lot of character for a team that is only two years old, to come to a country we’re not used to playing in and play our style.”
And now they will play that style in yet another country. With Tuesday’s theatrical triumph in the round-of-16, Forge FC travels to either Jamaica to play Waterhouse FC or to Haiti for Arcahaie FC in the quarterfinals, sometime in December. Those two squads were scheduled to play Thursday night.
If Forge can win that game, then the previously unthinkable becomes a reality. Hamilton receives a direct entry into the 2021 CONCACAF Champions League, the biggest club tournament in this part of the world: on a par, theoretically, with Europe’s Champions League.
Even if Forge loses in December, it gets a second-chance game, with a play-in round for the losing quarterfinalists.
Forge FC has already outstripped everyone’s predictions but its own, and it’s impossible to overstate what this all means not only to the Hamilton franchise and its hearty supporters but, perhaps most of all, to the status of the Canadian Premier League.
The CPL’s two-time champs have played four rounds of international soccer in 16 months and won three of them. And Tuesday, they eliminated a team deep in history and continental success.
Head coach Bobby Smyrniotis conceded the Forge didn’t have the “best week of training” during its 11-day isolation in Panama after eliminating Municipal Limeno but reassured his players they had never been so physically fit, despite a six-week hiatus from competition prior to heading to El Salvador.
He told them their fitness could carry them through the lactic acidity of Tuesday’s late minutes and it did, but so too did their roster depth.
They were generally solid up and down the pitch. But, on a heavy, rain-sodden grass pitch that looked like the rodeo just left town, relentless pressure and speed from the attacking wings — David Choinière and Kadell Thomas in the first half, Anthony Novak and injury-recovered Chris Nanco in the second — tilted the balance of play against a smart, skilled and mostly young Tauro side.
Choinière’s wheels and dribbling skills led to the gifted Babouli’s opening strike. And Novak forced the winning penalty call with a powerful surge into the box just as regulation time was expiring.
Then the left-footed Krutzen calmly out-thought 19-year-old Tauro goalkeeper Jorginho Frias, who came in as an injury replacement late in the first half.
Frias had preserved the tie earlier with two stunning saves on Nanco.
Babouli said Forge FC is “making a dent” in the international soccer world, adding that, while carrying the Canadian flag to within 90 minutes of the continental Champions League “puts a lot of pressure on us,” the team likes, and thrives, on that heat of expectation.
Forge now returns to Canada for another self-quarantine, during which Smyrniotis and his staff will immediately begin to map strategy for either Jamaica or Haiti.
“We hope we can keep writing these magical moments,” he said calmly.
But he was only calm on the outside.