There are draws that feel like defeats and draws that feel like theft. This one, wrung from the Berlin evening in the second minute of added time, belonged firmly to the latter category. When Tim Skarke stabbed home from very close range to make it 3-3, the Stadion An der Alten Försterei erupted with the relief of a side that had stared down the barrel of an opening-day humiliation and blinked at exactly the right moment.
For Eintracht Frankfurt, it will register as two points surrendered rather than one salvaged, and the reason had a name attached to it in triplicate. Younes Ebnoutalib scored three, ran the game for long stretches, and looked for an hour to be the difference between the two clubs. That he ended the night without a victory to show for it is the cruelty of a fixture that refused to stay still.
Both sides finish the weekend on a single point, Frankfurt fifth and Union Berlin sixth, separated by nothing more than the fine print of goal difference. It is the tightest of beginnings, a scoreline that flatters neither defence and thrills anyone with a taste for chaos.
A frantic opening
Union could scarcely have dreamed of a better start. Inside three minutes Josip Juranovic swung a cross into the box following a corner, and Emmanuel Latte Lath rose at the centre of it to plant a header into the top right corner. The home crowd had barely settled into their seats before they were on their feet, and the tone appeared set for a comfortable afternoon in front of their own.
Football, though, keeps its own counsel. Within seven minutes the lead had not merely evaporated but inverted. Ebnoutalib pounced from the left side of the six-yard box after a corner to level in the tenth minute, his right foot steering the ball into the bottom left corner. It was the sort of goal that punishes a moment's slackness, and Union had barely reset before the next blow landed.
A single minute later, Ebnoutalib struck again, this time from outside the box, a clean right-footed drive curling into the bottom right corner. Two goals in the space of sixty seconds turned the whole complexion of the contest on its head. Union had led, blinked, and found themselves chasing a game they had controlled only moments earlier.
Ebnoutalib completes it
If the first half belonged to sudden reversals, the second settled into something closer to Frankfurt's rhythm. The visitors carried their lead with growing conviction, and on 67 minutes they appeared to have made the afternoon safe. Elias Baum threaded the pass, Ebnoutalib collected it in the centre of the box, and his right foot did the rest, the finish rolling into the bottom right corner for a personal hat-trick.
At 3-1, with the clock ticking past the hour, the story looked written. Frankfurt had weathered the early scare, absorbed Union's opening flurry and answered every question with the composure of a side that knew exactly what it wanted from the evening. Ebnoutalib's third was the punctuation mark on a performance of ruthless, repeatable finishing.
Yet a two-goal cushion at An der Alten Försterei has always been a fragile thing. Union do not surrender in this arena, and the crowd, sensing the season was too young to abandon, began to push their side forward with the kind of noise that bends matches out of shape. Frankfurt, so clinical in front of goal, would now have to prove they could defend a lead they had earned.
The Berlin fightback
The response, when it came, arrived from the same source that had opened the scoring. Juranovic once again delivered from a corner, and Leopold Querfeld met it with a downward header into the bottom left corner on 79 minutes. Suddenly it was 3-2, and the whole ground leaned in. Set pieces had been Union's lifeline all evening, and they were not finished mining them.
Frankfurt retreated into their own half, inviting pressure they had spent the second half trying to avoid. Every Union delivery now carried menace, every clearance felt provisional. The visitors' back line, which had looked so assured while protecting a two-goal margin, began to fray under the weight of repeated set-piece bombardment and the sheer momentum of a home crowd that scented an equaliser.
It duly came in the second minute of stoppage time, and fittingly it came from a set piece. Querfeld turned provider, his knockdown falling to Skarke, who lashed it home from very close range into the bottom right corner. Bedlam. From 3-1 down with twenty minutes left, Union had clawed their way to a point that felt, in the moment, like a triumph. Frankfurt were left to rue a lead let slip in the cruellest fashion.
What it means
A single point apiece is a strange yield for two teams who between them produced six goals and enough drama to fill a season. Union Berlin sit sixth, Eintracht Frankfurt fifth, each with a solitary draw to their name and a goal difference of nothing. The table tells a story of parity that the ninety minutes barely bore out, given how one-sided the middle third of the contest had felt.
For Frankfurt, the frustration will linger longest. To have a player produce a hat-trick, to lead 3-1 with the game in hand, and still walk away with only a point is the kind of result that tests a squad's early-season nerve. Ebnoutalib's brilliance deserved three points, and the manner in which they were denied him — twice from corners, once from a set piece — will demand attention on the training ground.
Union, by contrast, take from this the intangible currency that has long defined them at An der Alten Försterei: the refusal to accept defeat while a whistle remains unblown. Latte Lath, Querfeld and Skarke all found the net, and Juranovic's delivery from dead balls proved a weapon Frankfurt never learned to neutralise. A point earned this way carries a value beyond its numerical weight, and both clubs leave the opening weekend knowing precisely what they are and what they must still fix.