Dániel Gazdag’s late goal preserves a point for the Union in MLS season opener vs. Chicago

The Union came from behind twice to tie the Chicago Fire, 2-2, in their regular-season opener Saturday night at a frigid Subaru Park.

Brian Gutiérrez opened the scoring in the 39th minute for Chicago, Mikael Uhre equalized in the 55th, former Union player Fabian Herbers made it 2-1 in the 82nd, and Dániel Gazdag struck the last one in stoppage time, creating a wild finish.

As Union manager Jim Curtin warned could happen, Andre Blake’s adductor injury suffered Tuesday proved too much to overcome for a start. So new backup goalkeeper Oliver Semmle got the call, with Holden Trent as the reserve option on the bench.

Starting Semmle wasn’t too much of a surprise. Between the weather and Chicago being one of MLS’s worst teams in recent years, there was room to take the risk — just as starting Blake would have been a risk, with the Concacaf Champions Cup series finale against Costa Rica’s Deportivo Saprissa coming Tuesday at Subaru Park (8:15 p.m., FS2, TUDN).

The 10 players in front of Semmle were the same ones that started last Tuesday at Saprissa, including Damion Lowe at centerback. Jack Elliott also wasn’t ready to start, dealing with his own adductor injury, even though Curtin said Friday that the sweeper seemed able to go.

The cautionary approach got some justification within two minutes of kickoff when Chicago left back Andrew Gutman took a seat at midfield without anyone near him. He’d pulled up a moment earlier, and waved to the bench to call his own number for a substitution. The medical staff came to help Gutman off the field, and Chase Gasper replaced him.

» READ MORE: MLS says it has global ambition, but too often acts like it doesn’t. That needs to change.

Gutiérrez’s opener was beautiful for everyone except the Union’s defense. He took the ball on the left wing, cut in, dribbled past José Andrés Martínez, and ripped a thunderbolt of a shot from 18 yards.

The 23-year-old is a rare homegrown success story for a Fire team that has spent huge sums on underperforming imports. He’s also a candidate to make the U.S. Olympic team this summer, albeit not a leading one right now the way the Union midfielder Jack McGlynn is.

The Union nearly equalized in the 42nd, but Mikael Uhre couldn’t get to Quinn Sullivan’s well-hit low cross in time. And it looked like Gazdag scored less than a minute into the second half, so fast that the score bug wasn’t back on the TV broadcast yet. But he was a step offside, and a video review caught him.

Viewers at home might have noticed that Gazdag looked back toward the assistant referee on the sideline to see if his flag was down, and only started celebrating when it was.

After enduring so much criticism last year, and fluffing a big chance in Costa Rica last Tuesday, Uhre couldn’t have asked for better than to score a goal in this game.

Sullivan started the play by chipping a pass up the right wing for Nathan Harriel, who corralled the ball and played a square pass to Gazdag atop the 18-yard box. Gazdag then sprung Sullivan with a nifty first touch, Uhre timed his run off of Mauricio Pineda’s shoulder perfectly, and Sullivan fed Uhre for a tap-in finish.

» READ MORE: MLS says it has global ambition, but too often acts like it doesn’t. That needs to change.

That makes two straight games in which Sullivan has made key contributions to goals from his new role at right midfield.

Then again, it isn’t all that new in the bigger picture. He played it early on when he turned pro, then got moved to forward because that right central role had long belonged to Alejandro Bedoya. Now, Sullivan is back in his old place — and he’s looking good at it.

Of all Chicago’s players, you’d think new $12 million striker Hugo Cuypers would be the leading candidate to score a late winner.

Instead, it was a long-ago Union player. Herbers was the No. 6 pick in the 2016 college draft, back when Earnie Stewart was the club’s sporting director. Ernst Tanner traded Herbers to Chicago after the 2018 season in one of his first moves in charge, and Herbers has been with the Fire ever since.

The goal was pretty ugly. Gutiérrez shot from the right wing, Semmle saved it into the middle of the 18-yard box, and after it pinged around amid slipshod Union defending, Herbers buried it.

But the Union would persevere and ensure there’d be one more plot twist left. Sullivan, Bedoya (who entered the match in the 79th minute) and Martínez produced a nifty passing sequence, and Martínez served up a great cross that Gazdag slammed in with a header.

Uhre was close to a winner in the 95th minute after a corner kick, but hit the crossbar — and Glesnes had a header saved in the 100th.

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The replacement official crew led by center ref Muhammad Hassan let a lot go in the first half. That came more at the Union’s expense than Chicago’s, which the crowd gave him an earful about.

There were only scattered boos when the officiating crew’s names were announced before kickoff. That will have pleased the Professional Referee Organization and Major League Soccer, which hope enough fans don’t know or care about the ongoing lockout of unionized top-level referees.

Hassan called 14 fouls in the first half, seven per side; and 11 in the second, six against the Union and five against the Fire.

This was Hassan’s first MLS game. He previously worked a handful of contests in the second-tier USL Championship, the third-tier USL League One, and MLS’s Next Pro reserve league.

One might wonder what the conversation was like when Hassan went to the review monitor after Gazdag scored, and heard PRO general manager Mark Geiger on the other end of the line. Geiger stepped in as the video review official for this game, working from MLS’s new video replay command center in Arlington, Texas. He also worked the Columbus-Atlanta game Saturday afternoon.

» READ MORE: How the Union prepared to deal with having replacement refs in this game