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Mo Babouli Returns: A Big Player for Forge FC’s Biggest Stage

“Big players make big plays in big games” – Mo Babouli

How deliciously appropriate that his first game back in burnt orange will come on the continent’s biggest stage for club soccer.

It was during the Hammers’ seminal surge through the 2021 Concacaf League into qualifying for the 2022 Champions Cup that Forge FC   fans fell in love with the eye-catching work of Mo Babouli.

The 32-year-old attacker is a ball magnet. Inventive on the dribble, a demon on set-piece delivery and thunderously effective with his shot, Babouli returns this season to Forge, with whom he spent the 2020 and 2021 CPL campaigns. He’ll make his debut Feb. 5 in the Champions League first round against CF Monterrey.

In Hamilton, he’ll be reunited with not only a small handful of players he helped win the 2020 CPL title in the Island Games, but with striker Brian Wright, his scoring brother-in-arms (or brother-in-feet) the past two seasons with York United.

The Forge pledged to fortify their impact in the final third of the pitch after they had some trouble scoring in the closing games of the season, including their 2-1 loss in the league final to arch-rival Cavalry. Now they’ve got Wright, the Players Player of the Year, Babouli and impressive rookie Maxim Filion taken in the U Sports draft. That’s in addition to the likes of David Choinière, Tristan Borges, Kyle Bekker, Nana Ampomah and a palette of other threats.

Head coach Bobby Smyrniotis now has even more depth and flexibility up front and will decide as time goes on where Babouli slots in. It could be in different positions, from one game to the next.

“Good players fit in a team,” Smyrniotis says. “One thing we know we were missing last year (after Kwasi Poku was sold to a Belgian side); although we scored the most goals, it’s more of an opportunity to have more players on the pitch who can contribute to the attacking side of the field. When you can add a player of his quality, and we know him very well, you always entertain that. And you come up with the solutions later.

“We’ve obviously got a talented group up top. We’ll announce signing a couple of other guys who are quite talented as well and will make sure we’re a very potent team. We’re a much more energetic team in the front. When you can have a bigger core of players out there who can contribute, you can have a little bit more rotation, you can have that freshness through the whole season.”

Babouli has huge credentials: a national championship with Sheridan College;  a Canadian title with TFC; a CPL crown with Forge; a League 1 Ontario trophy with TFC III; playing and scoring for Canada at the 2015 Pan Am Games in Hamilton; playing for the United Arab Emirates in World Cup qualifying; winning the League 1 Golden Boot with TFC III; scoring five goals in seven games for Smyrtniotis’s 2017 Sigma FC; scoring a dozen times in 44 games over his two previous Forge years; scoring eight goals in the Syrian Premier League; scoring a stunning nine goals in just four CSL games for Ukraine United; and spending a brief period in Qatar.

And in 2021 he was named to the Concacaf League all-tournament team for his three goals and two assists with Forge. This was after he’d been named the man of the match in the 2020 CPL final in the Island Games, but he grabbed the spotlight in international play.

He scored the winning goal in the first leg as Forge defeated El Salvador’s CD Fas, the winning goal in the next round against Panama’s Independiente, and helped engineer the comeback from a 3-1 loss in the opening leg against Costa Rican side Santos de Guápiles, by setting up the first goal in the home leg and scoring the goal which gave Hamilton the lead. That made CPL history, qualifying them for the 2022 Champions League.

“At the time (then assistant coach) Peter (Reynders) always used to tell me that big players show up at big times in big games,” Babouli says. “So that always motivated me to be the guy to try to help this team put some goals in the back of the net and help us secure some wins. I was doing my job and you can see the rest of the team was doing theirs to score goals and create goals.

“And that’s the aim again this year.”

Babouli said he re-chose Forge not only for the personal history but also “for the competing. The organization has been in the final six times, so they’re doing something right. I’ve been here before and I know how things work here. And we have a good understanding so it’s great to come back to familiar territory and help the boys win again.

“I know what I can do, and I know what this team brings. I want to compete, I want to play in championships and want to play in Concacaf.”

After his stellar Forge work in 2020-21 earned him a stay with Qatar second-division side Muaither SC, Babouli wanted to return to Hamilton, picking up where he had left off.

“But when I came back to Canada Forge was full,” he said. “They just didn’t have a spot and I wanted to play so I took what was available at the time.”

Which was a contract at York United, which he joined in mid-summer of 2022. In his second game, he scored his first York goal in a 3-1 victory over—of course– Forge. He scored five goals in the eight games he played that season, then added seven goals in each of the next two seasons.

After a slow start last spring, and some injury concerns, he caught fire when York changed coaches and instituted a different offensive set-up which freed him up for both the dribble and the shot and sometimes paired him and Wright as double strikers. His production expanded to the point that he was the CPL’s Player of the Month in July.

“I think they’re trying to figure out what they want to do there, and what the identity is,” he says of York, Hamilton’s 905 Derby rival.  “I played my part in it and I hope they were happy with it.”

But the lure to migrate back to his CPL ‘home’ and Champions Cup was strong and as Forge re-calibrated some of its front third, he seemed like a natural fit and he doesn’t care where he lines up, “I just want to play.

“We’re not certain what the whole group we’re going to have will be yet but I’m sure Coach Bobby has a plan.  I can play multiple positions; second striker, I can play on the wing, I can play No. 8  or 10. They have a system and as long as you can perform in this system you should be okay.”

With that renewed strength up front, is there enough ball to go around?

“Definitely,” he said.