When Bobby Smyrniotis says Forge FC has two No. 1 goaltenders, he’s not just throwing out a bromide to protect team unity. 

In the 28 Canadian Premier League games this season 22-year-old Chris Kalongo and Jassem Koleilat (25) have each played in exactly half. They have logged precisely the same number of minutes (1260) and Kolielat’s 40 saves are only one more than Kalongo has made.

And between them, they’ve recorded 10 clean sheets, tying Forge with Pacific FC for the league lead.

But there can be only one goaltender on the pitch and this Sunday afternoon in yet another huge match for the Hammers, it will be Koleilat.

One of the areas in which Koleilat has distinguished himself, not only locally but across the league, is the clean-sheet column. His seven shutouts are just one behind the CPL leader Marco Carducci –who will be at the other end of the field for the CPL 1st-vs.-2nd semifinals Sunday—and Carducci has played 13 more games than Koleilat. In fact, nobody else among the top eight clean-sheet leaders (Kalongo is No. 9 with three shutouts) has appeared in fewer than 20 games this season.

“One thing I’ll say is that the style of play of this team complements the way I’ve always played, which is not to face too many shots but to make the save when you have to,” Koleilat said after Forge’s practice today. “I think I fit into this system well.”

Looking for an opportunity to play more after he parted ways with LAFC’s No. 2 team in the off-season Koleilat joined the Forge on a short-term deal just before the Forge played against Cruz Azul in the Champions Cup during the winter.

He’d trained for a couple of weeks with Forge in 2022 just prior to his final year at  University of New Hampshire where he was a regional all-star.

So the Forge kept track of him as UNH made it into the third round of the NCAA playoffs and set all kinds of league defensive records, and monitored his rookie pro season with LA, when he got into only seven games in MLS Next Pro, the third division of American pro soccer.

The Forge were heading into an early 2024 start with Champions Cup without Triston Henry, who had been the winningest goaltender in the CPL over its first five seasons but is now living fulltime in the U.S.

“We knew (Henry) wouldn’t be back but we were just trying to make the right decision,” says head coach Bobby Smyrniotis who signed Koleilat to a long term deal shortly after the Champions Cup. “We knew we had Chris and he’d be good but we wanted a goalie to bring in not as a backup but as a starting-level keeper to create competition, like we do across the park in other positions, and we’ve got that by adding Jassem.

“He knew the environment, he’d been here, and sometimes that’s part of the decision making: bringing in players who are comfortable with what we see. It’s worked out very well.”

Like so many Forge players, Koleilat has had an interesting, diversified and often challenging path through and around hurdles to finding a home in Hamilton.

His mother is Lebanese and his father is Lebanese-Czech. They met in Lebanon then moved to Montréal for six years, while his father got his MBA at McGill. Although he was born in Prague before moving with his family to Dubai when he was two months old, his parents’ stretch in Montreal qualifies him as Canadian under FIFA rules.

He started playing soccer in Dubai but there was little opportunity to develop there and when a visiting French coach who was helping his club team set up Koleilat with a spot in the youth academy at Stade Lavallois in Western France he left the United Arab Emirates at the age of 16.

In his second year with Lavallois, he played for the academy sides and trained with the first team, but he was then released from the academy. He finished high school in France and, with his father’s Czech heritage, shifted to the U-23s of AC Sparta Prague, the most prestigious franchise in Czechia.

“They gave me a pro offer but it wasn’t guaranteed or anything and I decided, with my father, to go the U.S. college route.”

He committed to Syracuse but had to de-commit when the NCAA did not accept his school credits from France. To upgrade his school qualifications, he chose Iowa Western Junior College, the best JUCO soccer program in the U.S. He got his academic credits, made second-team all-regional on the pitch and second-team Academic off it, and transferred to New Hampshire.

At Iowa Western—which is where former Ticat running back Don Jackson played—the coach asked him to recruit Moïse Bombito, the centre back, now the emerging star of the Canadian Men’s National Team. There’s a Montreal connection but Koleilat had never met Bombito but did eventually talk him into coming to Iowa, where Bombito won the national championship. But Koleilat had already transferred to the NCAA and didn’t play in Iowa with him, although he did recruit Bombito to join him at the Seacoast United Phantoms in the summertime USL League 2, and then for a year at New Hampshire.

“When he got to Western Iowa I had got into New Hampshire, so he sent me a message, ‘You’re not even here any more,’” Koleilat laughs. “When he finished his Juco journey I recruited him for New Hampshire and he said, ‘You better not leave again!’”

They reached the third round of the NCAA tournament together, losing on a shootout (Bombito missed his penalty) and then Koleilat was drafted in the second round of the 2023 MLS SuperDraft, 58th overall, by LAFC but got into only seven games with their reserve team last season.

“It was weird,” he says. “I wasn’t getting minutes. The first-team keepers kept getting brought down to play the second-team games so I wasn’t playing any more. I parted ways with the club. They decided even though I was doing a good job, that there was no real path to minutes.

“So I came to Forge. It’s something I needed personally and the way things have gone here it’s been quite enjoyable. It’s the best team in the league, a great situation.”

He says his biggest improvement is being “more composed in possession. It’s helped just being here and learning.”

And what does he have to improve on?

“I think in distribution point,” he says. “I think I can rely a lot more on my confidence in that. I have the abilities for it but I think I just have to keep hammering that it’s something I’m good at it  and I shouldn’t be worried about it. I feel that’s sometimes what gets to me; once you start doubting how good you actually are, that’s when you’re uncertain. But it’s something I’ve been working on and I’m just going to keep hacking at it.”

The semifinal round against TFC—in which Forge tied the MLS side 2-2 in aggregate but lost on away goals—was a highlight of his career. Hamilton lost the second leg 1-0 in Toronto but Koleilat made six saves, including a couple of highlight quick-reaction stops.

“It was kind of a moment of the things you want as a kid,” he says. “Playing what people called a bigger team—to us in the locker room it’s just another team— a Cup game, under the lights, being the underdogs, it was special. I felt I did well and felt had the backing of the staff and the guys on the team.”

He also has the backing of Kalongo and Kalongo has his. They’re very competitive in practice and give each other pointers … and critiques.

“It’s tops,” he says of the relationship with the other No. 1. “We talk about it a lot.  I’ve been in locker rooms where the goalkeepers don’t get along—obviously, there’s only one who plays. But we’ve both been in positions where we don’t play much, so now both being here together and having spent the time, I think the respect between us is huge.

“The dynamics between me and Chris is it’s very much a love for the position. I don’t think people know how important that can be.”

His teammates and coaches do.