D.C. United hold on for 2-1 win over Red Bulls despite half-hour down a man

Four minutes. That's all it took for D.C. United to go up on the scoreboard at Audi Field, and after being reduced to ten men from the 67th minute, the club held on to claim a 2-1 win over New York Red Bulls that, given everything that followed, felt tighter than the final score suggests. MLS delivered a strange game: the team that won barely touched the ball.

Tai Baribo opened the scoring from the penalty spot just as the match got underway, after a foul by Adri Mehmeti inside the box on the Israeli forward himself. The 1-0 arrived almost before Red Bulls could react. The visitors answered with persistent pressure for the rest of the first half, with shots from Justin Che, Cade Cowell and Julian Hall that failed to find the target, but it was the home side that struck again. At the start of the second half, in the 49th minute, Silvan Hefti headed home a point-blank corner kick that Baribo had flicked on, also with his head, and the 2-0 seemed to settle the match before the hour mark.

What followed was a parade of chances for New York Red Bulls, sped up by Lucas Bartlett's red card in the 67th minute for a second yellow, which left D.C. United with ten men for nearly half an hour. With room to work and an extra man, Red Bulls pulled one back in the 70th minute: Eric Choupo-Moting, who had just come on, finished with his left foot from close range after a through ball from Emil Forsberg, another substitute who proved decisive in the closing stretch. The 2-1 set off an endless finish: Cameron Harper rattled the post in the 85th minute, and deep into stoppage time Red Bulls kept pushing with crosses from Forsberg that never found a finishing touch.

The numbers tell a different story

If you only look at the scoreboard, D.C. United won. If you look at the stats, the dominance was overwhelming for the other side.

New York Red Bulls fired off 24 shots to the home side's mere 4, and our expected-goals estimate based on the match's shots backs up that impression: 2.718 xG for the visitors against 1.267 for D.C. United. With those numbers, René Weiler's side won with an efficiency that didn't need the ball to show itself: with three shots on target they converted two goals, while Michael Bradley's Red Bulls squandered a far greater offensive output.

The buildup had suggested a fairly even matchup: our projection gave D.C. United a 34 percent chance of victory, 27 percent for a draw and 39 percent for New York Red Bulls, with combined expected goals of 2.95. The final result landed on the less likely side of that calculation, and the way the match played out, with the visitors dominating nearly all the possession and shots, confirms this was a win built more on clinical finishing than footballing superiority.

What it means in the standings

In MLS's Eastern Conference, the win leaves D.C. United with 33 points from 28 matches played, while New York Red Bulls sit on 36 points from 29 appearances. Just three points separate the two clubs, both stuck in the lower-middle of the table, where every result carries weight. For New York Red Bulls, the loss while playing a man up for half an hour leaves the feeling of a missed opportunity. For D.C. United, it's three points earned by the slimmest of margins, thanks to a blistering start and a final half hour of resistance with a man down.