After nearly two years of anticipation (and hand-wringing), New York City FC took to Yankee Stadium Sunday for their first ever home match. In front of an announced crowd of 43,507, the Blues managed to send them home happy, with David Villa's skillful play driving the club to a 2-0 victory over the New England Revolution.

The Bronx was buzzing long before kickoff, with fans who had been waiting for the area's newest MLS club packing bars near 161st Street. While the club’s culture is newly born (more on that later), a number of members of the club’s supporters groups took a short but energetic march to the match.

On the field, it all went according to plan. The first half saw both sides putting together strong attacking sequences. NYCFC would strike first, as David Villa streaked through the Revs back line and beat Bobby Shuttleworth from close range for his first MLS goal.

On the other end, the Revs attack (lead by former New York Red Bulls striker Juan Agudelo) had chances that should've been easy goals falter with attackers unable to apply the final touch.

Jason Kreis' side had an easier time in the second half. The Revs attack died down, and when New England defender Jose Goncalves pulled down super sub Khiry Shelton, the resulting red card gave City a man advantage for the second week in a row.

The insurance goal would come late, as David Villa would feed Patrick Mullins - who NYCFC had acquired from New England in the expansion draft - for an easy tap-in goal on his first touch of any sort for his new club. Most players don't go out of their way to celebrate against their former club, but that wasn't Mullins' style: he kissed the NYCFC badge on his shirt in front of the cheering supporters.

So the result was basically perfect: skillful goals and a clean sheet for the home side. Was there anything to complain about? Of course there were! This is NYC sports, after all.

One thing that wasn’t complained about so much was the playing surface, the area of biggest concern over the last week. The ball took the occasional weird skips and hops, but Yankee Stadium is being forced to use this year. The huge crowd for the NYCFC game (43,507 is north of the average 42,520 the Yankees saw at home during the YEAH JEETS Farewell Tour) caused a massive logjam at the gates, even with fans arriving two hours early. It kept a number of fans from seeing the club kick off, or even Mayor De Blasio’s awkward interactions with David Villa, forcing some to watch the game from their phones:

That time when the majority of the streaming traffic to watch #NYCFC was coming from OUTSIDE THE STADIUM because getting in was such a mess. One more reason to hate the Yankees.
A photo posted by Meena Duerson (@meenasaurus) on Mar 15, 2015 at 2:19pm PDT

There’s also the acoustics. Yankee Stadium is huge and open air, which means a lot of the crowd ambience can’t easily cross the stadium. To wit, the Third Rail and other supporters groups (who were located in the bleachers near left center field) were nearly inaudible from the press box (behind home plate). Hell, we couldn’t even hear the whistle for most stoppages of play.

There were other small things that will probably work themselves out over time. The stadium announcement expected fans to shout Patrick Mullins’ last name to complete the call, but the fans - perhaps unfamiliar with Mullins - weren’t having it. The halftime entertainment, a band of overly animated musicians playing salsa under the name “CITY SOUNDS”, needs to never be heard from again. And the club need a default chant that isn’t “NYC! NYC! NYC!”.

Even with these issues, it’s hard to not consider the NYCFC opener was a rousing success, both on the field and off.

NYCFC takes on the Colorado Rapids on the road Saturday, March 21st at 4PM ET. The game will be televised on YES. The Red Bulls open at home on Sunday at 5PM against DC United; that game will be on ESPN2.

POST-MATCH REACTIONS

Captain David Villa on the result: “I’m very, very happy with the match. I’m very happy with the results. I’m even happier with the commitment and the work rate my teammates have shown today. And as I said earlier, on a cold day like today, first game at home, I think it was over 42,000 fans behind us, and I think that’s amazing. Once again, I’d like to thank all the fans for coming here today, and we’ll continue to work hard so every game they’ll be going home happy like today.”

Coach Jason Kreis on the team still being a work in progress: “I’ve been preaching—maybe to deaf ears—this will not be a finished product in Week One. I knew that coming in. Listen, it’s probably harder for me than anybody else because I’m not an impatient person. I also have a vision of what this group could look like. I think we have some very, very talented players. It’s just going to take time. It’s going to take minutes together on the training field. It’s going to take minutes together in the matches. It’s going to take these players being in all different kinds of tactical situations in matches. I’m hoping that we’re going to improve week over week. I would say that this week was better than last week, and I’ll be hoping that next week will be better than this week. David’s performance, again, was much improved. I thought last week was very, very difficult for him as I knew it would be. This is an extremely physical league in which defenders don’t give you any time or space on the ball, and there’s a lot of physical confrontations because of that. But I know that he’s an incredibly talented player, he’s an incredibly smart player, and he’s not shy. To me, he’s the exact type of player that will be incredibly successful in this league, but it will take some time.”

We had so much fun tonight. Thank you to everybody who made this evening so special. The crowd was insane 👏
— Mix Diskerud (@MixDiskerud) March 16, 2015