D.C. United vs. New York City FC GIFs

For the second time in three weeks, in front of an overflow (by current RFK standards) crowd, D.C. United muscled up in a game they needed to win and did the thing in a 3-1 win over New York City FC that was fraught with beauty, weirdness and general fun.

So now we’ll look at some moments from the game, the first being a nice interchange with Patrick Mullins and Patrick Nyarko, in a precursor to the Saints Patrick combination on the goal a little later:

Next up is the foul on Luciano Acosta that Alan Kelly bizarrely refused to give a card to. The game was testy throughout the day and exchanges like this did no favors:

Then Lucho gets his retribution 2 minutes later. The good thing about Kelly’s stupidity from the previous foul is that unless it was obscenely blatant it wasn’t going to get a card, and it didn’t, so we get the talismanic midfielder next week against Orlando City SC:

Next up is not the first D.C. goal (Matt Doyle talked about it) but the second, and Bobby Boswell getting in with little contest on. There’s a reason NYCFC have allowed the most goals from set pieces this year, and it’s marking like this:

Next is this save by Bill Hamid on Diego Martinez. I feel like Bill from August or September might not have gotten this one, but good to see him engaged over the course of the match:

Next is the penalty kick David Villa got from the Taylor Kemp foul. I mean, he did get him and all, but arms out, looking at Kelly, who’d had a sicko of a match at that point? Bruh:

Last is this first half play. I’m going to try and get back to this later in the week, but started off of a subpar corner, this exchange, from Acosta in a 40 yard backpass, to Hamid’s 50 yard longball, to Boswell’s cross to Steve Birnbaum is not only pleasantly surreal, it shows a team in full confidence and ever-growing assurance in who they are and what they’re doing.

The pieces will improve and be in better position and even connect on that volley when given the chance down the road, but this sequence crystallizes everything we haven’t seen from D.C. United in a timeframe longer than I’d like to count up:

So what things did you like from the game?