New York City FC beat Orlando City as Pirlo makes MLS debut

“It really opens it all up for us”.

Thirty minutes of brilliance. The Blues took a massive step towards making the playoffs in their inaugural season with a 5-3 victory.

Glenn Crooks is the color commentator for New York City FC on WFAN and the former head soccer coach at Rutgers University.

Pirlo admitted that one of the reasons he left Juventus was his fear that he’d no longer be the focal point of the club’s plans, but downplayed any notion that his move to MLS was based completely on a big pay day.

It was a very frustrating first half for the OCSC.

But Orlando wouldn’t be denied.

But being on a New York team means becoming a New Yorker… We have a new team, a team that started from scratch this year.

It was the Colombian’s first goal for the Club and in MLS. When he replaced Mehdi Ballouchy in the 57th minute, most of the announced crowd of 32,041 rose for an ovation.

Orlando City fielded a 3-4-3 lineup on the narrow field at Yankee Stadium, and it was also surprisingly without right back Rafael Ramos.

This week’s soccer action saw the debut of Andrea Pirlo (and a ton of goals) at Yankee Stadium, a lot of weirdness in Harrison, and more struggles for the Cosmos. That leveled the game at two. The group is always more important than individual players. The forward cut inside to beat Aurelien Collin and proceeded to fire it to the far post as goalie Tally Hall was left rooted to the ground.

Villa scored six minutes later to give NYCFC the lead for good. Villa should have scored 4 goals as well. With exhausted legs from the heat and humidity, the game eventually fell to penalties, and Philly would take the win in the shootout as Bradley Wright-Phillips missed his third straight spot kick.

Except that Larin would make it interesting.

Larin completed his hat-trick with a brilliant toe-poked finish five minutes from time. Jefferson Mena, the Colombian signed two weeks ago, was at fault for all three goals. Orlando City FC has come away with points in four of their last five home MLS matches and is 1-1-3 during that span overall. Incredibly, the same situation presented itself. Lampard is in better shape and showed during moments last season that he still has the eye for goal and the wit and speed to make unsafe runs into scoring positions. Mix Diskerud is still away at the Gold Cup and won’t feature.

He started the counter attack.

Angelino served up a pinpoint ball from midfield over the top to Villa in the box. And like that, New York City secured all three points. Both teams’ defense was, well, I’ll call it lax.