Homegrown Slonina Gets Clean Sheet in Debut for Fire

CHICAGO, IL–On the way to the match on Wednesday, the Chicago’s homegrown player Gabriel Slonina had a car breakdown en route to Soldier Field. It could’ve been a long night ahead of him, but instead he made it to the match in time for something more than he ever expected.

Slonina made his first-ever start and became the youngest goalkeeper in Major League Soccer history at the age of 17 years and 81 days. He also had a clean sheet, made four saves, and really deserved the honor of Man of the Match for a first appearance as the Chicago Fire ended in a 0-0 draw against visiting New York City FC on Wednesday night.

“Yeah, I’m super thankful for the tie first and foremost,” Slonina said. “But, I’m super emotional, a lot of hard work went into this moment. I’m proud of the team for fighting, keeping this a tie and getting a point. Every point is important in the season, I’m super grateful and thankful for the team. I’m just feeling great right now.”

The opportunity for Slonina in goal was because of a knee injury to starting keeper Bobby Shuttleworth in Sunday’s draw against the Union in Philadelphia.

“I knew, I was getting my first start during training,” Slonina said. “Bobby was just recovering, he needed a game off and I knew at training before, that I was going to be starting this game. Rapha (Wicky) and the entire coaching staff was super confident, super positive towards my start. They believed in me and gave me the confidence I needed for this game.”

As for the coaching staff and coach Rafael Wicky, seeing a young goalkeeper make his first start and get a clean sheet really did leave an impression.

“Yeah, I think at some point we’re very happy, with his performance,” Wicky said, “The team tried to protect and help support him. They did a great job in having a zero for his first game of his career. In his first game of his professional career is obviously amazing. I’m happy with the defensive performance, even there are always things we can do better, but I’m happy with the performance.

“New York City FC is a very good team. They’re playing really good futbol and attacking futbol for many years and creating a lot. So I think as a team we’ve done a great job. I also think, we cleaned that up a little bit at halftime and came out better (in the second half). We had some good moments , so I think the performance that we can build and take this point.”

One thing in consideration on the performance was that the Fire was on the defensive side as they were outshot 15-5 in the match, but they managed to dominate the possession slightly in its favor.

New York City FC (8-5-3, 27 points) had lost one of its players, being Keaton Parks to a second yellow card in the 73rd minute and Chicago (3-9-5, 14 points) had the benefit of playing with a man advantage for the rest of the match.

“The feeling you have playing with a man up with 15-18 minutes left, you hope to take more advantage of that,” Wicky said. “I think that’s where we weren’t the cleanest. The cleanest as well in our ideas, but I think this is a good point and we take that.”

NYCFC had been on a winning streak of three straight matches. Head Coach Ronny Deila opted to make two changes to the team that started last time out against Columbus Crew, with Alfredo Morales replacing Nicolás Acevedo and Sean Johnson stepping in for Luis Barraza.

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