OMNISPORT

If you were a casual soccer fan clicking channels and stumbling on Sunday's installment of the Hudson River Derby, you might have assumed the team with all the familiar faces was the red-hot team climbing up the standings. Frank Lampard, David Villa and Andrea Pirlo are world-famous players, and any team with all three would be expected to be a powerhouse. That isn't the reality in New York, where the Red Bulls showed once again that their decision to move away from the big-name driven model of years past is paying dividends.

The Red Bulls completed a season sweep of NYCFC, posting a 2-0 victory on Sunday that keeps them in second place in the MLS Eastern Conference and sends a clear message that even the addition of more big names isn't enough to wrest away the title of "Best Team in New York."

The victory was more validation for the Red Bulls' decision to move away from their past approach of building teams around bigger-name players. Thierry Henry served as the club's focal point for five seasons and when the former Arsenal man retired last winter the club made the conscious decision to focus less on trying to replace him and Australian star Tim Cahill. The philosophical change wreaked of simple cost-cutting by an ownership group looking to minimize losses, and for some it was seen as a step toward selling the team.

Those fears are distant memories now as the Red Bulls enjoy success with a team built around a more balanced roster, one featuring a good mix of players from reasonably priced foreigners to strong Americans and also academy products. All these elements were on display on Sunday. You had Bradley Wright-Phillips, who makes a fraction of what David Villa makes but who has scored more goals in the past year and a half than any other player in MLS. You had academy products Matt Miazga and Connor Lade enjoying excellent defensive performances to help the Red Bulls earn a shutout. Then you had the midfield trio of Sacha Kljestan, Dax McCarty and Felipe commanding the middle and outplaying their NYCFC counterparts, who make significantly more money but who failed to deliver the quality expected of their price tags.

Red Bulls head coach Jesse Marsch and technical director Ali Curtis have molded the roster into a strong one and recently added the attacking pieces the team was craving in winger Shaun Wright-Phillips and midfielder Gonzalo Veron. Neither was in the starting lineup on Sunday though, and it didn't slow down the Red Bulls, even with NYCFC boasting Lampard, Pirlo and Villa.

While the Red Bulls enjoy success with a new philosphy, NYCFC is still enduring the growing pains of an expansion team trying to strike the right balance between showcasing its stars and fielding a well-rounded team. Jason Kreis has yet to really find that combination, and NYCFC's attacking riches have dwarfed its shaky defense, which has allowed 13 goals in its past five matches. That leaky defense has overshadowed an attack that has scored 11 goals in those same five matches, an attack that should be even more potent now that Lampard and Pirlo have made their way into the starting lineup.

The question is whether the NYCFC roster has the pieces to make a successful team. It might sound extreme to expect an expansion team to make the playoffs in its first year, but when a team invests as much as NYCFC has invested into this season, the playoffs are a minimum requirement. The defense was supposed to benefit from the arrivals of Andoni Iraola, Jefferson Mena and Angelino, but recent results haven't born that out. It could simply be a case of the team's many new players needing time to settle in and adjust, but NYCFC is running out of time to figure things out as the playoffs slip further and further away from a team with one of the largest payrolls in the league.

The Red Bulls don't have such concerns these days. They are on a strong run of results, having gone 6-1-1 in their past eight matches. They have two new attacking weapons to integrate into the rotation in Shaun Wright-Phillips and Veron, and if those additions make an impact, the Red Bulls could very well make a run at a trip to the MLS Cup final.

The days of the Red Bulls being overspending underachievers are over for now, while their rivals across the river deal with the realization that NYCFC now wears that label.