Avoiding the Drop

Yesterday Bob Bradley popped out the squad for the upcoming World Cup qualifiers against El Salvador and Trinidad & Tobago. There are a couple of changes, and I’ll probably get to them on Monday; I usually would cover the whole team first, but special circumstances have come up that warrant a special post devoted to one guy.

Specifically, we need to discuss the especially awful decision to continuously include Conor Casey on the U.S. Men’s roster.

We’ve talked about this situation a few times before, but, shockingly, Bob Bradley hasn’t been reading. So in an effort to articulate the exact problem that I have with Conor Casey, I’ve attempted to outline the varying degrees of awful that he reaches when he plays on the team. We’ll start with aesthetics and move into stats. All of this is after the jump.

First off, the aesthetics. I’d planned to show you some YouTube videos of how awful Conor Casey is on the pitch, but that plan was derailed by the simple fact that no YouTube videos of Casey playing for the national team seem to exist. So, sadly, you’re going to have to take my word for this: his play is ugly. He’s a stockier guy, so he doesn’t have a lot of pace. His positioning maximizes his inability to pass or trap. He barely gets the ball around the area to shoot, which is problematic since he’s a freaking striker and that’s pretty much his only job.

So let’s take a look at his stats instead. Casey was first capped in the 2000 Summer Olympics. He played every minute of the first two games of the group stages (against the Czech Republic and Cameroon) before Clive Charles decided that he’d seen enough and pulled him off against Kuwait in the thirtieth minute for Landon Donovan. Donovan would go on to score the goal that won the group for U.S. on goal differential in the 86th minute of that game.

Still, Casey was chosen to participate in the quarterfinal match against Japan; that was a 2-2 draw that went to penalty kicks, which Casey didn’t take. That’s probably the reason the U.S. advanced onto the semifinals, winning the penalty kick phase 5-4. Casey played the whole semifinal match against Spain as well, which the U.S. managed to lose 3-1. Same playing time for the bronze medal match against Chile, which the U.S. lost 2-0; Casey played the whole thing.

So right there, you’re looking at a guy who started six matches against similar competition, on a successful team, playing a position that’s defined by how well you can score, without any goals. That’s a goal scoring drought, folks. Put it this way: if any striker on any team that you supported went that long without scoring, you’d at least be worried. On FM, they’d mention it as a milestone; “Conor Casey hasn’t scored for 510 minutes”, or something like that.

The love affair with Casey at the youth level continued on to the 2001 World Youth Cup in Argentina. One would have to give credit to new manager Wolfgang Sunholz, who noticed the disturbing “not scoring” habit that Casey had developed and pulled him in the 56th minute of the first match. Casey was then benched for a match against Chile, which (perhaps not coincidentally) they won 4-1; he then returned to the field in the 64′ against the Ukraine in a 1-1 draw. The U.S. then advanced to the round of 16, where Casey started against Egypt in a 2-0 loss.

So now we’re up to, what? Eight youth caps without a goal? I mean, yeah, he’s played more than me. And yet, we’ve still had about the same impact on the success of the team: none at all.

Casey would debut for the actual full side in 2004 against Poland, and he played in a smattering of other matches between 2004 and 2006. I’d tell you more specifics on the match details, but Conor Casey’s page at U.S. Soccer’s official website has crashed my browser three times in what I’m going to call a perfect example of cosmic irony. Other sources, however, reveal that he played sparsely under Bruce Arenas, getting most of his pitchtime in friendlies. Friendlies are fine; they don’t matter, they give him a nice confidence, boost, whatever.

Under Bob Bradley, however, Casey’s stock has risen. Bradley seems to believe that Casey is at least worth calling up to the national side for matches that actually matter. Lately Casey’s shown up an alarming number of times as a late game substitute, running around without any idea of what he’s doing.

How lost is he? A quick look at his Confederations Cup heat maps (Brazil, Egypt, Spain, Brazil #2) shows that he’s got an odd knack for not playing anywhere near the opponent’s area. Against Egypt, he floated everywhere but there; the second time out against Brazil, he parked himself pretty much right on the top left of the center circle. And sure, you could say that he’s trying for link up play…but his passing accuracy was only 29% in the tournament. In fact, he only completed five passes in the entire tournament (I have a feeling that his Gold Cup performances weren’t much better, but CONCACAF’s statkeeping is much worse than FIFA’s).

Just about the only person who should be happy about Casey’s continued selection is Brian Ching. Why? Because, if Casey hadn’t been selected, I’d be writing up a very similar post on how Brian Ching also sucks and shouldn’t get a guaranteed call up, let alone a spot in the starting eleven. He’s slow, doesn’t really score that often, has no cohesion with his midfielders, and is basically a less talented version of Jozy Altidore. That’s an article for another time, however.

Let’s recap my Casey-specific issues:

1. Conor Casey is an awful player on the international level (his MLS play, from what I understand, is fine).
2. For some reason, Bob Bradley comes to a different conclusion about Casey than any objective person looking at the details (a total of 22 matches for the U.S., not a goal scored, and a generally confused demeanor on the pitch when he’s allowed there) would.
3. Casey, at 28, is well past his prime, and is being included in the side at the expense of younger, more talented players. He’s been given multiple opportunities and has failed to produce any result at all, and because of this he shouldn’t be continually called up to the squad.
4. The fact that the U.S. Soccer Federation continues to call him up may represent a larger failure to properly evaluate and/or foster talent for the national team (we didn’t talk about this in here, but I have a feeling we’re going to be getting around to it).

What say you, readers? Am I being harsh here, or does selecting Conor Casey to the national team just not make any sense anymore?