What goes around comes around. Kind of like an Olimpico.
Five years after he was the first man ever to win the Canadian Premier League Player of the Year (2019), Tristan Borges became the first to win it twice, when he was handed the season’s most prestigious honour at Thursday night’s CPL awards gala.
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Borges was selected as the league’s top player over a star-studded group of finalists that included two of his teammates, Ali Hojabrpour and captain Kyle Bekker, the 2020 winner who has been a finalist in all but one of the CPL’s six seasons. Also in the Final Five were league-scoring champion Tobias Warschewski of Cavalry FC—Hamilton’s opponent in Saturday’s CPL championship final—and York United’s Brian Wright, who earlier had won the Players’ Player Award, the only hardware determined by a poll of all the league’s athletes.
“It’s something special,” Borges said. “When you look at the other players nominated, they all had great seasons. Just my own teammates ….they had great years.
“I think of all the years when I first started playing and all my family members, my girlfriend, my friends, all my support system, who are the reason I’m here and obviously I want to thank all my teammates.”
It was Borges’ Olimpico goal—left-footed from the Barton Battalion’s corner of the field, hooking intothe net at the far post—which gave the Forge its fourth title last year in a 2-1 overtime win over Cavalry. But the memorable impact of that goal sometimes obscures the fact that he’d played most of last season with Achilles tendon and knee injuries which severely hampered his play. Normally a prolific scorer—he won the league’s first Golden Boot award, earning him the first major transfer fee (to Belgium) in CPL history—he had only two league goals and four assists last year.
But on a 2024 squad which spread the goals around, Borges had seven assists, just one back of league-leading Bekker and was tied for fifth in goals with eight. He also dominated the flanks, often moving from one side to the other in Forge’s fluid offence.
“Last year was tough,” he said. “It was a challenge for me mentally and I took the approach in the off-season to get back my confidence physically and mentally and have a comeback year. It’s been a good year so far, something special for me, but we still have something to win on the weekend. Winning that game is all that really matters.”
Borges played for several youth-team organizations, including a Dutch u-21 team (SC Heereneveen) before joining Bobby Smyrniotis and his brother Costa with Sigma FC in the semi-pro League1 Ontario in September 2018, knowing that the CPL would ge starting the following season.
And last night Smyrniotis finally won coach of the year, after having been nominated each of the league’s first six seasons. The other finalists were Cavalry’s Tommy Wheeldon Jr., who won in 2019, and York United’s Benjamin Mora.
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“It just shows you that good things happen when you have patience,” Borges said. “He absolutely has deserved it.”
When Smyrniotis came on the stage for the presentation respected OneSoccer and CPL.ca analyst Kristian Jack quipped, “What took him so long?”
Smyrniotis’s teams have won four league titles and lost the other time in the finals and are the only team in a major North American Team sport in the 21st Century to reach six straight finals. He promotes attractive offensive soccer, has developed the two players with by far the highest transfer fees in league history—Kwasi Poku and Borges—sent several other players to a higher tier of play, upset CF Montréal in this year’s Canadian Championship, has led his team into 20 international matches and was a viable candidate for both the Toronto FC and Canadian men’s national team coaching jobs.
“It’s the players who are first,” Smyrniotis said last night. “We have to make sure as coaches we allow them a platform to get better.”
One of those players who had the platform and definitely got better was Kwasi Poku.
Poku was named the U-21 player of the year, despite being sold to RWD Molenbeek in August. Poku arrived in February 2022 as primarily an outside back and made his first start in the high-pressure Concacaf Champions League against iconic Mexican side Cruz Azul.
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He had to miss last year’s championship victory because he was hurt, then opened this season with an injury. But with both Forge strikers—Jordan Hamilton and Terran Campbell—injured, Smyrniotis made the unanticipated move of shifting Poku up the field and into the top No. 9 striking spot. He responded with eight goals in 10 games before he was transferred for a CPL record fee.
Poku’s season is in full swing in Belgium, so he couldn’t be at the awards ceremony but did send a video message, thanking his Forge coaches, teammates and staff for a growth-centred environment.
“I made it my goal to win it this year,” said Poku, who heard the news that he’d won from his close friend Malik Owolabi-Belewu. . “It started off as a very rough year for me with an injury in Champions League being in and out of the squad, not quite knowing my place. But I found my role and was supported and am very thankful.”