CHESTER, Pa. -- There was rain, wind, goals, ejections, and a whole lot of craziness.
But, in the end, there wasn’t a win as the Philadelphia Union and Montreal Impact battled to a 2-2 draw in a wild game played in a driving rainstorm Saturday night at PPL Park.
Ignacio Piatti and Jack McInerney scored for the Impact (5-6-3), while Eric Ayuk and Maurice Edu were the goalscorers for Philadelphia (5-10-4) as both teams went down a man in the second half of the chippy Eastern Conference contest.
The first ejection came in the 67th minute when, with the game tied at 1-1, Montreal captain Patrice Bernier was whistled for his second yellow card on a nasty open-field tackle on Vincent Nogueira.
But just three minutes after going down a man, the Impact took a 2-1 lead when McInerney made a nice touch on an Andres Romero pass to turn around Union center back Richie Marquez and beat Union goalie Brian Sylvestre.
It was the fourth goal of the season for McInerney, who was the Union’s leading scorer in 2013 before getting dealt to Montreal for Andrew Wenger early in the 2014 season. He entered Saturday’s game just 10 minutes before scoring to heavy boos from the Sons of Ben.
Six minutes after McInerney’s goal stunned the sparse PPL Park crowd, the Union equalized when captain Edu pounced on a rebound following a long-distance blast from Fabinho and tapped it home to open his 2015 account.
But things quickly took a turn for the worse for the hosts when Ayuk was shown his second yellow for a studs-up tackle on Piatti two minutes later, evening the contest at 10 men apiece.
The game really opened up from there as Piatti and Edu both misfired on point-blank attempts and Marquez had a goal called back in the 82nd minute for being offside. But neither team could find the winner.
Long before the second-half drama, the Union struck first on a beautiful goal from Ayuk, the second of the 18-year-old rookie’s MLS career.
Getting the start in place of the struggling Wenger on the wing, Ayuk fired a rocket into the corner of the net after C.J. Sapong laid off a cross from Cristian Maidana in the 8th minute.
The Impact tied it up 20 minutes later on a terrific individual effort from Piatti, who sliced through the Union defense with two cutback moves towards the middle of the field, before ripping one past Sylvestre from the top of the box for his fourth goal of the year.
Neither team, both playing shorthanded due to injury and struggling to find their footing on the soggy field, managed another shot on target in the first half as the game went to halftime tied at 1-1.
The Union have their third home game in a week when they welcome D.C. United to PPL Park for a US Open Cup game Tuesday. The Impact return home to face New York City FC next Saturday.
