CPL champs Forge FC take MVP, top ‘tender awards

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This article was published 26/11/2020 (1769 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Thursday night’s Canadian Premier League Awards didn’t exactly go how Winnipeg soccer fans had hoped.

Winnipegger Marco Bustos, an attacking midfielder for Victoria’s Pacific FC, was a finalist for the league’s player of the year award after scoring five goals and adding three assists in 10 matches this summer at the Island Games in Charlottetown, P.E.I.

It wasn’t enough to get the nod. The 24-year-old Maples product, who played for his hometown club Valour FC in 2019 before taking his talents out west, was edged out by Forge FC captain Kyle Bekker. The 30-year-old midfielder from Oakville, Ont., scored three goals and had one assist while leading Forge FC to their second-straight CPL championship.

Forge is the only team to have an MVP as Tristan Borges won it for the Hamilton club last year in the league’s inaugural season. This year’s season was played as a single-site tournament owing to COVID-19 restrictions.

For the first time in the league’s brief history, Valour had a player nominated for an award. Defender Julian Dunn, a Toronto native who was on loan from Toronto FC, was a finalist for the Canadian under-21 top player award after a strong showing this summer. But it wasn’t meant to be for him, either, as Cavalry’s Mohamed Farsi took home the prize.

The Golden Glove, awarded to the top goaltender, went to Forge’s Triston Henry. The winners were selected by a judging panel comprised of media members from across Canada.

With their individual and team awards, Forge has set the bar as the team to beat in the CPL. By winning the 2020 league title, Forge qualified for the CONCACAF League. The Hamilton club has turned a lot of heads in the annual continental club soccer tournament as they’ve won games in El Salvador (Club Deportivo Municipal Limeño) and Panama (Tauro FC) to advance to the quarter-finals. Forge will look to continue their historic run on Tuesday when they play Haitian club Arcahaie FC in the Dominican Republic.

Forge is the only CPL team still together and playing.

“When we got together as a group at the beginning of the year, we said we want to set the precedent where if people think about the Canadian Premier League, they think about Forge FC,” said Bekker in a Zoom call with reporters. “Then they start to look at the players on our team to be the pinnacle and the gold standard in this league. That’s the motivation day in and day out and that’s been what we’ve wanted to achieve. I think so far it’s gone well. We’ve got two plates to show for it. We’re going to go back to the drawing board, keep that same motivation and keep forging ahead.”

So, what’s it going to take for one of the other seven CPL teams to knock Forge off the top of the mountain?

“We know how competitive it is and how tough it is in a unique league like this with few teams,” said Bekker, who made 18 appearances with the Canadian senior men’s team between 2013-17 and started his professional career with Toronto FC.

“It’s hard to go week in and week out and play the same team over and over and continue to be motivated to go out there and get the job done. That’s the beauty of these guys in this group we got here, is it’s everyone’s trying to do something special. That’s the million-dollar question. I think we’re gonna have to continue to adapt and get better and keep pushing the envelope and keep setting that standard higher and higher. I’d hope everyone else in the league is doing the same thing cause we’re not done yet.”

The HFX Wanderers had a chance to slow Forge down in this year’s championship game but fell 2-0. However, the Halifax club was one of the best stories to come out of the Island Games. They finished the 2019 CPL fall season in last place and managed to turn the team around in 2020 to go on a run to the final. Wanderers manager Stephen Hart was rewarded for the impressive turnaround by being named coach of the year.

“It was in a tournament format, although a very difficult one, but you know, it was a brand-new team,” said Hart about the strides his team took this year.

“Everything was new. We only kept, I think it was seven players… But really and truly the difference was how the players came together. It was a really good, tight-knit group, a family sort of vibe within the team at all times. They looked after each other.”

While Hart’s side is trending in the right direction, he knows there’s a lot more work that needs to be done to catch Forge.

“It’s no secret that Forge is the standard-bearer… They’ve got players who’ve played in the Premiership, players that have played in Europe, players that have played in the MLS, and that goes a long way because at the end of the day, you can’t coach experience,” Hart said.

“Under pressure, they’re an extremely calm team… If you could get through the bad moments and capitalize on your good moments, then usually you come away with the result and Forge is very good at it.”

taylor.allen@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @TaylorAllen31