HARRISON, N.J. — Since 1996, the first year of Major League Soccer, D.C. United has been the guys in the black hats — actually the all-black uniforms — first against the MetroStars and now against the Red Bulls.
While D.C. has won four league titles, the Red Bulls have a trophy chest that is bare except for last season’s Supporters Shield as the No. 1 team over all during the regular season. And that did not mean much after the Red Bulls were ousted in the Eastern Conference semifinals by Houston.
On Sunday, before an announced crowd of 18,054 at Red Bull Arena, the home team shook off tired legs and, playing in its third game in eight days, cobbled together one of its strongest matches of the season. The Red Bulls, led by two sparkling assists by their captain, Thierry Henry, defeated D.C., 2-0, in the first leg of a home-and-home conference semifinal series, which will be decided by total goals. The return match will be played Saturday in Washington. A tie or a loss by one goal would send the Red Bulls to the next round.
For Henry, 37, the match again showed a player with exquisite skill, vision and determination.
“When No. 14 is in the mood, he simply can’t be stopped,” Red Bulls midfielder Dax McCarty said. “Today, he was as close to unstoppable as anyone in this league can be. No one knows his plans — maybe he does — and I think part of it is that he’s motivated to prove that he’s still a great player. He’s not only a great player but a great leader, a leader by example.”
Henry is in the final months of his contract with the league.
McCarty, who teamed with Eric Alexander in central midfield to stifle the D.C. attack before it got started, said that Henry brought his teammates together after Thursday’s 2-1 win over Sporting Kansas City in the play-in game.
“He said it’s not over yet; we’ve won nothing,” McCarty said. “He said we have a long way to go. That, to me, is the mark of a captain.”
The history between the MetroStars/Red Bulls and D.C. United, especially in the postseason, leans heavily to the team from the nation’s capital. D.C. has won all four of the previous playoff series between the teams, with a 6-1-2 record. That record includes the bizarre series between the teams in 2012, when Hurricane Sandy forced the first game to be switched to Washington before the second game in New Jersey was postponed one day because of a snowstorm.
Over all in the regular season, United leads the series, 33-23-9. During the recent regular season, D.C. won two of the three games between the clubs as it engineered the greatest single-season turnaround in league history, improving by 42 points from last season and finishing in first place in the conference. The two teams have even swapped a number of players, including Red Bulls Coach Mike Petke and McCarty. D.C. Coach Ben Olsen was also a longtime player for United.
The Red Bulls knew there would be no excuses.
“It’s all mental,” said Peguy Luyindula, a super-sub in the win over Kansas City and a starter over Tim Cahill on Sunday. “With three games, you don’t have much time to focus and recover. You think maybe they have more legs. But when you’re in the playoffs, you really don’t have time to think about it.”
While D.C. may have had more of the ball in the first 15 minutes of the game, the Red Bulls were finally able to open up and play from the wings, with Lloyd Sam on the right and Luyindula and Henry floating on the left. In the 40th minute, Sam picked up the ball about 40 yards from the D.C. goal and, as Henry called for it, Sam slipped a pass along the ground to him. Henry touched the ball once with his right foot, then hit a perfect backheel pass that Luyindula let run to Bradley Wright-Phillips. Wright-Phillips, who led M.L.S. with 27 goals during the regular season, buried his third goal of the playoffs past D.C. goalkeeper Bill Hamid.
“They were rested and we looked slower, but once we found the wings, we started to find success,” Petke said. “I don’t know where we found the energy.”
In the 73rd minute, Henry had the ball at his feet at the midfield line, head up, eyes wide. He struck a long, diagonal ball that found the streaking Luyindula, who controlled it and then slid a shot through the legs of Hamid for the insurance goal.
“He’s a special player,” Petke said of Henry. “We all know that. On the first goal, it was a great buildup and the backheel. I mean, a lot of guys would have hit the backheel and done it without a clue of who’s behind them. But he knew.”
An earlier version of this article misstated the score of the Red Bulls’ victory on Sunday over D.C. United. It was 2-0, not 2-1. The error was repeated in a picture caption.