Beni Badibanga didn’t want to leave the hotel room where he has been staying since the season started until his friend Nana Ampomah got there and they could make accommodation plans together.

But Badibanga had to bide his time for days, then weeks, then months.

But Ampomah’s long-anticipated arrival finally came last week and the winger from Ghana trained only a handful of days with Forge FC before suiting up for his first game, last Saturday in Halifax. And in 30 or so minutes of play, he demonstrated why the Hammers have been so anxious for him to set foot on Canadian soil.

It was one of those bad news/good news afternoons for Hamilton as they failed to convert several golden opportunities early, and came away with only a 2-2 draw but also showed the fortitude to rebound from a 2-1 deficit with a picturesque goal in the 93rd minute that revolved around—wouldn’t you know it—Ampomah.

As an extra sweetener, Forge’s opening goal was scored on a lunging low header by Badibanga, triggering a celebratory running backflip from Ampomah’s fellow African-born (Republic of Congo) winger. 

“Unfortunately, we didn’t have the win but we did come back for the tie,” said Ampomah of his first game in Canada. “The calibre of play was good. We had some good possessions and we could have won the game. We had some chances but we didn’t take our opportunities. Apart from that, I think it is a pretty okay game.”

More than okay, in the context of expectations being faced and delivered upon.

Ampomah was signed back in February, with the intent that he’d inject a little something extra into Forge for not only the CPL season but, more importantly, Forge’s biggest matches, including playoffs, international matches and the close-to-internationals that are the latter rounds of  Canadian Championships.

It’s the same kind of thinking with original Forge Elimane Cissé who still has not been allowed back into the country from Senegal, despite having had prior work visa approvals. Shoving a message in a bottle and throwing it in the ocean would be a faster process than what’s gone down with the two Hammer imports.

“With people from Africa our passports can be a little bit difficult for us when we have the opportunity to come to Europe or North America, you need to go through a lot of screening,” Ampomah says calmly. “I felt like it’s something that took a long time and we had to be patient but I’m happy I’m here right now.”

So are the Forge.

“He had a good first start to his career here,” captain Kyle Bekker said. “It’s been a very short time but he’s a guy who can play out on the wing and be very effective. I think he can be forthright which is something we’ve missed at times.

“He’s definitely looking to take people on. As the game has changed, you see a lot of wingers inverting, trying to connect with the play and build up with the team. But there’s still something about that old-school school winger who’s willing to get the ball and just drive players and take on players one-on-one and beat them with pace or just dribble and come inside and take a shot, which adds something a little different than what we have at the moment.”

That was exactly the script on last weekend’s game-tying goal, just as it appeared Forge was headed for three lost points. Noah Jensen floated a perfect long crossing pass to the Wanderers’ right side which Ampomah deftly knocked down to his feet in full stride and dribbled hard to the net around a defender, drawing him and another Halifax player close to the goal line. Then he skimmed a seeing-eye pass across the box, just beyond the charging Tristan Borges and right to striker Kwasi Poku who tapped it home.

“I like to play behind the defence so when he gave me that ball my mind was to run behind the defence and I felt I had to use my speed,” Ampomah explained. “Tristan did a very good run and the striker finished it in a very good way.”

Earlier, just after he substituted in, Ampomah had his own superb chance to score, off a delicious feed from Daniel Parra to the far left post, but the pitch was so wet that the ball essentially got lodged in the grass. The Ghanian had to make sure his plant foot was stable and then had to take enough time to hit the ball squarely that the goalkeeper and a defender were just barely able to lunge over for the desperation stop.

“If the field was in a good condition I would hit it one time but it was tough to hit it one time because it was stuck,” Ampomah said. “We’ll learn from that.”

Ampomah was identified as a potential future star while playing youth football for Prisco Minis in Ghana. In his mid-teens, he went to Brazil for tryouts and then played for the youth academy of Santos, Pelé’s alma mater. His dream had always been to play in Europe so when his agent landed him a contract with Belgium’s KV Mechelin’s U-21s in 2016,  he changed continents yet again. The following season he signed a three-year deal with Waasland-Beveren in Belgium’s top pro league and he scored 18 times in 84 games over three years.

In Ampomah’s second season at Beveren, Badibanga joined the team for the start of his three-year stint there. The club roomed them in a hotel together and they became such close friends they decided to share an apartment the following season.  They cooked their respective country’s specialties for each other, trusted each other with shopping and bonded on several levels, part of it cultural, part of it who they are as individuals.

“It’s both,” they say, almost in unison.

“I would say he is similar to me,” Ampomah says of Badibanga. “We like to share, we like to give. So when he came to the team I felt like we had the same character and the same ways: how we like to look after each other. I didn’t have my driving license and he used to drive me to training every time. I feel like it really brought us together. Trying to look out for each other and make sure each other is good, even in training. We find  the same things funny…we have so many things in common.”

Badibanga is far more outgoing and demonstrative in public than his roommate but suggests that still, waters do indeed run deep.

“He can seem like he’s an introvert but he’s a really cool guy,” he said of Ampomah in advance of this Sunday’s home game against Valour. “He’s a nice person. He likes to give to other people, more than what he receives. When he arrived in Europe, for example, things were not easy for him, so as soon as he saw a younger person or a new person come in, he made sure the person was comfortable. And that’s what he did for me. Even after he left (for German side Fortuna Düsseldorf)  he was making sure I was comfortable in Belgium. As soon as I see that I have a chance to give him back what he gives to people I will do it.”

Among the traits they share is a strong religious belief.

“I feel like the more you give, the more you get,” Ampomah says. “The more you think of people the more blessings you get. Where we’re coming from (in Africa) it’s not that easy …so you always have to try to give back and make sure people are good. That’s how the world should be:  take care of each other.”

In their first year together at Beveren, they used to sub in for each other as left-side attackers and later, at times, they played a few games together as they did in Halifax last week, “and it’s a nightmare for defenders, we both like to score,” Ampomah said.

In 2019 he signed with Fortuna Düsseldorf, played some games, then suffered an adductor (groin) injury, a serious setback for a soccer player. He was out for three months “but life goes on and you just have to adjust to it, it makes you a better person and a better man.”

But when he returned he wasn’t getting the playing time, or receiving the belief from his coach that he needed to advance his game, and “I felt I had to move on.” He was loaned to Royal Antwerp in Belgium, played 15 games there, then came back to Düsseldorf but was dispatched to the second team. When his contract expired late last fall, he departed the club.

Meanwhile, Badibanga had already moved to the Forge for the 2023 season. The two were always in touch, and even in the off-season would visit with each other’s families.

“In December he spoke to me about Hamilton and I felt like it was a good project,” Ampomah says. “The team was winning, the environment was beautiful and as a player you want to be around an environment like this. We spoke to the Sporting Director and the way he believed in me, I felt like it was a good place to enjoy the game again.”

Now he and Badibanga –-born 48 days apart, with Ampomah the elder—are back living together in a hotel, but scouring the local market for an apartment to rent.

Although their playing styles, like their personalities, are different, they have some common traits.

“We both like to take players on, we like to enjoy the game we like to have fun, we like to score goals we like to push each other,” Ampomah says. “Everybody knows Beni’s qualities. He’s one of the best technical players I’ve ever seen. It’s a talent you can’t take away from him. He’s just one in a million.”

Amplifying on that, Badibanga adds,  “We are a little similar. I know how to play with the ball, but football is not only about this. It’s about efficiency. When it comes to efficiency the guy I always look up to is him. I know how he wants to receive the ball. The way I understand Borges, it’s the same with him. I don’t have  to speak to him, he doesn’t have to say one word, I know where he wants the ball.”

Ampomah is on a two-year deal and won’t say what he hopes the future beyond that might hold for him, “because I think it’s important to put the team first. And that’s what we’re going to do, to win more championships.”

Bekker, who always has his finger squarely on the pulse of this team, says it’s not only Ampomah’s physical skills which are helpful–particularly with the critical first leg against TFC less than two weeks away–it’s also the timing of his arrival.

“It freshens up the group, it keeps guys on their toes, it adds that competitive edge in training where there’s another guy here who adds qualities you have to bring your best every day against to make sure you’re in the starting 11,” he says. “Which is what you need,  especially in a group that’s had success like we’ve had. You need to keep challenging each other, you need to find new ways to motivate each other.

“He’s had experience and he’s played in big games and he’s played all over, which is fantastic.”