I don't know much about this guy but he always seems to make the roster yet i don't see his name on the score sheet so much,is he any good?Just with players like noonan and twellman and cunningham,ect scoring regualry does he deserve to be playing so much?
More than anyone else, he's the heir apparent to McBride in the target forward / holding forward role. He has a a real bite to his game and brings an aggressive mindset that we often lack in the attacking third. He has good passing vision, so he's going to be effective creating for Donovan, Beasley, or his strike partner. For a big man, he has a decent first touch and turn. I like him, but there are plenty on here who believe it starts and stops with goal production at the forward position. And he hasn't been a prolific scorer in the 1.Bundesliga or with the Nats. As a result, they'd just as soon never see him again. If you're curious, there should be some good Casey threads in the archives, particularly in the Yanks Abroad forum.
Really, Casey has done everything you want up top except score. Of course, that's a very big except. If he can find a way to hit the net, he could be a very good forward -- I think Mainz thinks the same thing.
One wonders aloud how much further Casey would have progressed on the National Team front if he hadn't tweaked his knee in the first Grenada match...
From what I've seen, I think of him like a power forward in basketball. Big, physical, does a lot of the dirty work that doesn't show up on a stats sheet. He would be averaging 6.6 pts. and 7.5 rebounds a game. Would I like him to be an 18.1, 11.2 guy? Sure, but I think he still brings something to the table. If we have guys around him that can put the ball/start putting the ball in the net (i.e. E. Johnson, LD, Beasley), we wouldn't necessarily need him to be an out and out scorer. That being said, though, he probably needs to put at least 1 or 2 in the net during the Gold Cup to show that he is at least somewhat of a threat, especially against teams like Cuba.
Cripes. He sucks. Period. The guy has gotten a number of starts with the US "A" team, including at least 2 in WC Qualifiers, and has done nothing. Guys like Twellman get backup minutes with the B/C team, and people jump all over him for not scoring. Why all the apologists for this guy? We don't need bruisers ......... we need guys up top who can actually score.
yea but they're playing in MLS...he's playing in the bundesliga. If they were as good as he is they'd be playing there too.
He plays for one of the worst teams in the Bundesliga and is by no means a regular starter, he only gets occasional minutes and a very occasional start. And I believe he had one goal last season (might have been zero). There are players in MLS who choose MLS over the role Casey has in the Bundesliga (i.e. non-regular). A player like Josh Wolff makes $400,000 per year in MLS, and while I'm sure Casey made at least that in the Bundesliga, it wasn't much more, yet Wolff gets to have his family live in the US and be readily available to Bruce Arena for national team callups without the club/country conflict Casey is currenly embroiled in. It is not as clear cut as you think.
I'm not a big fan of the argument that any team doesn't "need" a forward to score goals. I don't think playing forward begins and ends with scoring goals, but I do think it begins with scoring goals. Goal scoring doesn't have to be the best thing you do, but it does have to be among the things you can do well. McBride is a forward who is as good as he is because goal scoring is not the only thing he brings to the table, but that doesn't mean that he can't score goals. I guess what I'm saying is that Casey doesn't have to have an EJ-like breakout to make a mark on this team, but he doesn have to prove himself capable of finding the net against decent teams, which he hasn't come anywhere close to doing for club or country.
I don't think there was anything to it, except that Casey is from Denver. He really hasn't done anything for the national team yet, so he needs to impress at the Gold Cup more than anybody. He had better score a few goals against the likes of Canada and Cuba!
I too had wondered why Conor Casey was constantly being called into camp only to see sparse, if sporadic, time on the pitch, and when he was getting minutes, although he played well enough and always seemed to help create, he did not score -- meaning I thought he was replaceable. I thought this way until I witnessed two Nat. Team practices, when it became apparent the guy not only can bring something to this team, but the coaching staff, including Bruce, seem to LOVE this guy. Granted, it was only two practices I saw, but he excelled at just about every drill. And he was especially a ringer at all shooting drills, crossing drills, and all drills where the focus was putting the ball in the back of the net. The guy can score. He has a cannon that stands far, far above everyone else on the practice fields those two days. There was no question. Not only that, the coaching staff, including Bruce, seemed to delight in watching him collect the ball far outside the eighteen yard line and launch a bullet into the upper corner. These included one timers. These included crosses. Dead balls. Passes from behind and turning to shoot. And bullet passes from the corner flag that shoot diagnally out to the upper 18 arc. In fact, several times during these practices Bruce and company would huddle close by and watch with amusement as Conor put on a road show, if you will. Bruce would point, then joke out loud to Conor to go opposite corner. And every time, Conor would do it flawlessly. And when he didn't, he usually always hit goal. Which was a hell of a lot better than most of the others taking part in the drills. Witnessing these two practices is when I learned why Bruce keeps him ready in his arsenal of attackers. This is not to say that I think he deserves a starting role. In my opinion, he must consistently score or at least consistently set up a teammate who scores... because that is his role. Of course, if his role changes, then his credentials/resume may be very different (meaning, depending on the role, scoring goals may not be a requirement). Witnessing these practices is also how I now understand why Frankie Heyduk constantly gets called in. We all know he is tireless on the field (which is NOT to say that he is the best player for that position), always hustling and never stopping... you should see this kid in practice. Never stop. When others are faltering, Frankie's still going. Gives him a HUGE edge in late stages of game or practice, when he starts to shine. (Not very good with shooting drills, though!) Not saying practice is everything. But it has to be a large reason why players earn playing time, earn call backs (into camp), and earn most favored status.
I agree, there is still a huge gap between the big Euro leagues and MLS. I hate to bring him up, but you can literally be the best player in MLS and find yourself riding the bench in BL. Arena must be seeing something in Casey that will develop. So do the Germans. He's still pretty young, turning 24 in July. We have not seen his peak yet, so I can see why the coaches would stick with him.
Casey just doesn’t seem to have the skills to hold and dribble the ball. He is a big guy and that is about it – he doesn’t score often either. I just remember in the Olympics how frustrated I was when Clive Charles kept on playing him over Landon Donovan, where Casey didn’t score at all (I believe), but once LD was in we were much more dangerous. I can see why Charles played him – he was his little protégé from college, and he could say he discovered him. What is Bruce’s excuse?
Well actually he plays for a mid-table Bundesliga team (finished 11th). He started 14 games and subbed into 14 games. So that is a fairly regular starter and very regular player. He started training late because of his injury with the Nats last summer and he missed time due to injury in the middle of the season. He only scored 2 league goals, and 2 more cup goals (I think). That needs to improve. The best part of his game is not goal scoring, it is being a target forward setting up other players. In that role he has done well for the US (I submit the Poland game in Poland) and has the potential to improve into a starter for the US by next summer if he can stay healthy for a year.
Kind of odd that so many are calling for Jaqua to be included in the player pool, when the same can be said of him. Both players, in my opinion, do best when they take advantage of their size, and perhaps the thing they both need to learn, like McBride, is to work your tail off and get into the box. Neither has the ball skills needed to do otherwise. Casey is further along than Nate in this regard, but while there's potential, somehow, that switch just isn't fully on yet. Perhaps some significant moments during the Gold Cup will be what he needs, otherwise, I'm not sure he'll be more than depth and on the bad side of the bubble for a WC slot......
Casey's stats at Mainz: 29 appearances (Including 2 in German cup play) 16 starts (Including 2 in German cup play) 1585 minutes played 4 Goals (Including 2 in German cup play against Vfr Ahlen. The other 2 were against VfL Bochum (4/30) & VfL Wolfsburg (10/30)) 4 Yellow Cards Most times during the 2nd half of the season, he played behind the 2 strikers in a CF/AM position.
This is a great post, primarily for the point it makes about practice (yes, we know Mr. Iverson ) Bruce and the staff see a lot more of the guys than we do.
This is one of the more informative posts I've read on BigSoccer in a long time. Thank you for putting this out there. I don't think we realize how much emphasis Arena puts on camp. Or maybe we just forget. But it really seems like if Arena likes what he sees in camp, he will keep giving that player a shot regardless of what is happening at the club level. So while a guy like Taylor Twellman might be lighting up the league, if he isn't showing well in the camp setting, Bruce won't keep going back to him. You may disagree with the emphasis that Arena puts on "practice," but you ought to at least acknowledge that this is one area where Bruce has a lot more insight than any BS poster possibly could have. Obviously Bruce loves what he's seeing from Casey in the US camps, and he must feel that he can get more out of Casey than his club teams have been able to do so far. As far as the Jaqua vs. Casey comparisons go, I keep going back to Jaqua's freshman year at University of Portland. They were both huge guys, but their game was totally different. Casey has always played the classic target forward role, whereas Jaqua is just now starting to use his size and strength in Chicago and play more like a target forward. In the past, he's been much more inclined to drop back, turn and take guys on, and play off a target forward like Casey. I still think Nate has an outside chance of getting looks from Bruce before 2006, but as time keeps going by, it becomes an increasingly long shot.
It's funny because up until my experience of sitting in on these practices I had always been critical of Bruce Arena and other coaches about player selection. But after seeing these things in practice, especially how Casey and Hejduk (and Dempsey and Noonan) excelled in these intense drills and game simulations, above many of the other players, especially when I was at that very time wondering why Bruce would "waste" a valuable WCQ roster spot on Casey when there appeared many better (or equal) alternatives, a lesson was instilled in me that we as fans -- watching on TV, reading print media, and catching crosswinds on word of mouth -- only see a small fraction of what these guys really can do and, more importantly, what they are currently doing. This is not to take away performance on gameday, which of course is the most important aspect of why a player is chosen (i.e. EJ scores, EJ plays), but it is to say that when a fan slams Bruce et al by saying, "Player A sucks, what the heck is da Bruce thinking?" to "Hejduk can't play... Player B is better than Heydude... heck, anyone is better than Heydude," and then give reasons to back their point, I now think twice and often reserve judgement. There's a reason a player is in camp and stays in camp even though they do not get playing time.