AS EXPECTED, AN AGING French national teamer was the pivotal player for the New York Red Bulls in its 2-1 first round playoff win over reigning MLS champions Sporting Kansas City last night in Harrison, N.J.

No, not Thierry Henry.

It was 35-year-old countryman Peguy Luyindula who came off the bench and sparked a Red Bulls comeback with a pair of guy-behind-the-guy secondary assists that resulted in a pair of Bradley Wright-Phillips goals. The result abruptly ended Kansas City’s reign as league champions.

Luyindula came to MLS and the Red Bulls with far less hype than his compatriot Henry but he brought with him a pedigree that implied he could be a difference-maker. He played for France six times, including some World Cup qualifiers, and was part of the Lyon dynasty a decade ago that won back-to-back-to-back league titles. Those championships were sandwiched between a pair of French Cup wins, first with Strasbourg and then with Paris St. Germain.

It’s not Henry’s lofty pedigree—then again, few can match that one—but it showed last night that it’s still enough to make a difference in the playoffs. Brought off the bench in the 65th minute with the home team trailing 1-0, Luyundula was inserted between deep-lying central midfielder Dax McCarty and New York’s front line and he immediately provided invaluable link play that helped the Red Bulls maintain possession when it badly needed to do so.

On the first goal, Luyindula found Henry—the 37-year-old icon who has hinted this is final season in MLS—springing him with an accurate pass that left Henry alone on the left side of the box. Henry picked up his head and spotted Wright-Phillips, who slotted Henry’s pass into the shooter’s lower right corner to tie the game in the 77th minute.

In the 90th minute, with extra time looming, Luyundula found Ambrose Oyongo overlapping on the right flank and sprung him with a pass that left the Cameroonian national teamer wide open to deliver a cross. The cross was anything but perfect—a floating duck, high and arching, it was in the air way too long to be dangerous under most circumstances, but somehow Kansas City allowed it to come down to a wide open Wright-Phillips, who redirected the pass to the left corner and into the back of the net.

That was pretty much the ball game.

Much will be made of Sporting goalkeeper Eric Kronberg’s inability to snag the lofted cross that led to Wright-Phillips game-winner. And yes, it was in the air a long time and it’s a play most goalkeepers at this level make. At the same time, what’s with Kansas City’s backline losing track of Wright-Phillips, of all people?

If there’s one player to mark tightly it’s the guy who just tied a league-record for most goals in a season. Leaving him so wide open isn’t on Kronberg but on central backs Aurelien Collin and Matt Besler, former MLS Best XI defenders who showed why they won’t be winning that honor this year.

It also ignores the fact that Kansas City was only in this game because Wright-Phillips, Tim Cahill, and Henry had each squandered golden chances earlier in the game that players of their caliber usually finish. Had they done so, odds are this game would have been put away earlier.

When those chances didn’t find the back of the net, and when Sporting scored on a lovely interception, run, and pass by Benny Feilhaber—who set up Dom Dwyer for a sweet finish—it looked like yet another chapter of Metro-nee-RedBull Playoff Fever, which is not something you actually want to catch, given how often the New York/New Jersey-ers have bombed out of the playoffs.

But if Mike Petke has instilled this team with anything, it’s a sense of resilience. And where past Red Bull teams probably would have folded the tent when it went down a goal in the second half after blowing several ripe scoring chances, this team poured it on and only the club’s past playoff futility kept a tying goal from seeming inevitable.

And it helps, of course, to have a deep bench that includes players like Luyindula and Oyongo to call on when you need to spark a comeback. Petke used his subs adroitly and as a result his team advances to face D.C. United, the top seed in the east.

This will mark the fifth time the I-95 rivals have met in the postseason and New York has been eliminated by its southern rivals on all four prior occasions. This version of United is a gritty team—solid on defense and sufficiently scrappy and opportunistic on offense—and if the Red Bulls are to advance against D.C. it will require more efforts like what we saw against Kansas City.

More heroics from aging Frenchmen probably wouldn't hurt either.

Brooke Tunstall is an American Soccer Now contributing editor and ASN 100 panelist. You can follow him on Twitter.