It is officially the experimental phase of the Canadian Premier League season. With clubs facing one another for the third, fourth or possibly even fifth time this year given Canadian Championship meetings, they need to start to get creative and pose problems for opponents that perhaps they weren’t expecting based on previous knowledge.

Forge FC and head coach Bobby Smyrniotis have long been at the forefront of tactical innovation within the Canadian Premier League. With a squad this year that included 19 returning players for the 2022 playoff champions, familiarity with the club’s basic systems and philosophy has made that even easier.

“Always trying to do something different,” said Smyrniotis earlier this season, “We are going to play everyone a few times, you can’t be the same. We want to be able to play our football home and away.”

Of late, that has come in the form of a box midfield, a formation that includes two defensive midfielders and two more advanced central midfielders in a box-like shape. Forge, however, who have used a similar formation in the past have put a different spin on it this season by deploying Alexander Achinioti-Jönsson as a centreback defensively, but a player who will then move up into the defensive midfield alongside Alessandro Hojabrpour when the team has possession.

“When you have a player like Achinioti-Jönsson, who let’s face it he’s an excellent midfielder who is playing as a defender, and was the defender of the year last year…[you are] able to use his best qualities,” said Smyrniotis. “And that gives us an ability to keep [Kyle] Bekker higher up the field, whereas traditionally he drops a little bit lower, gets on the ball in lower areas, and just trying to get a different look to the way we attack that keeps more natural wingers on the pitch out wide instead of pushing up outside backs and it just gives us another dimension to add another player into zones where we can create more numbers [offensively].”

A perfect example of this in action came on the club’s second goal against Pacific in a 2-0 victory at Starlight Stadium last month. With Forge in possession of the ball, they shift into a back three as Achinioti-Jönsson joins Hojabrpour at the base of midfield. This frees up Bekker to play a one-two with winger Kwasi Poku and then make a run into space out wide. When he gets into a crossing position, he has several options in the box, the striker (Terran Campbell) as well as midfielder Noah Jensen who has also been freed to get into attacking positions because Achinioti-Jönsson and Hojabrpour are playing holding roles. When neither of them is able to get on the end of the cross, winger David Choinière has made a late run into the box to finish off the chance.

Bekker, in particular, has thrived in this new system. The box midfield creates opportunities for him to get on the ball further up the field in dangerous positions, particularly in space down the left wing where he can deliver crosses into the box with attackers in quality positions.

As a result, Bekker is putting up Player of the Year level numbers, leading the league in assists with seven, and chances created (40) while also scoring three goals. He was named the league’s Player of the Month for July — the month in which Forge debuted this new setup.

“Some of those innovations I will say that our staff have come up with this year have been essential to getting our influential players on the ball,” said Noah Jensen earlier this month. “We are at our best when we are in a position where guys like Ale and Alex can be the ones starting our attacks and then getting the ball into our dangerous players like Kyle and myself getting forward and creating opportunities. I think that that box has been another way to transform our team.”

It isn’t just that Bekker and Jensen are able to get into attacking positions, however, it is the overloads out wide they can create by doing that. The first two clips below show how Bekker is able to use these overloads to find pockets of space out wide. In the final clip, the width provided by Jensen on a switch from Hojabrpour allows Choinière to make a more central run, where, when he receives Jensen’s pass, he is able to lob a cross to Poku for a goal.

Whether it is Bekker or Jensen out wide or one of the wingers, the other is able to make runs into the box, or beyond the wide player if they hold up the ball, allowing for more runners in the penalty area in attacking situations.

“When you are getting into deep positions when there are cutbacks, balls to the back post, you may have a rebound,” said Smyrniotis earlier this season. “When those things happen you need to make sure you are playing the percentages. The percentages say more than four players are going to increase your percentage of scoring a goal.”

In the first clip, note the ball over the top out wide from Achinioti-Jönsson as an example of how this formation allows him to be in better positions to kickstart attacks. From there, with Borges out wide he has three runners in the box, with Bekker making a run to the back post that he is able to pick out for their opening goal against York United this past weekend.

An even better example of the value of having numbers in the box came from Forge’s visit to York Lions Stadium on July 9, shown in the second clip. Tristan Borges’s first-time cross initially doesn’t connect with Jensen’s head, before Jordan Hamilton is stopped by Niko Giantsopoulos. Campbell, however, is in the box to finish the chance. For a club that has hit the woodwork a league-leading 10 times, following up on opportunities like this becomes critical and the box midfield gives them more numbers to do that.

If there is one area of the box midfield that Forge still needs work sorting out it is defensively, which admittedly has been a problem in general this season. Forge have found some solidity by having central defender Garven Metusala play as sort of a right fullback who shifts over to cover Achinioti-Jönsson’s advances. But organization has been a bit of an issue, particularly in moments where Forge lose the ball in midfield.

The formation also appears to be slightly more effective defensively on narrower surfaces like Starlight Stadium where teams are less likely to be able to exploit bigger spaces left out wide by Forge’s more narrow central coverage. But as Smyrniotis has mentioned many times, this formation isn’t the final form of Forge, but another tactical option in their playbook.

“If you watch Forge I think we’ve played in five different ways this year,” he said. “If we feel that [the opposition] match [our plan] or counteract that we will switch to something else the players are comfortable with, if that [is matched] we will switch to something else.”

The box midfield, however, is certainly becoming a dangerous weapon in the Forge arsenal. It is the kind of tactical creativity that has helped to set the Hamilton club apart and is definitely worth watching to see how it evolves as the club chases even more silverware.

All video clips courtesy OneSoccer