Savannah McCaskill bringing high energy to USWNT while learning a new position

The United States women’s national team was nowhere near its best in a 1-1 draw with France on Sunday. The first half, in particular, was riddled with turnovers and poor decision-making. Megan Rapinoe didn’t sugar-coat the performance, simply stating, “it was bad.”

But there were silver linings, and perhaps none shinier than the performance of Savannah McCaskill off the bench. She entered the game at halftime and made an instant impact, helping the team to move the ball forward better in the first five minutes of the second half than it did at any point in the first. Most notably, the 21-year-old made that impact from the center of midfield, even though she’s just a few months removed from a college career where she played striker for South Carolina.

It was McCaskill’s third appearance for the USWNT, and her longest yet. That she looked so comfortable in a new position was a great sign for the team, and it should earn her some playing time in Wednesday’s match against England, as well as in future matches as the Americans build towards World Cup qualifying in October.

If you watch McCaskill, two aspects of her game stand out instantly: strength and work rate. She’s impossible to knock off the ball and looks like she’d be equally well-suited to rugby. She runs more — and harder — than anyone else on the pitch.

As a match goes on, you’ll start to notice the intricacies of her game. Her turns are quick and silky. She sees intelligent passing angles and almost always looks forward. She’s unselfish, always looking to find a teammate in a better position. She rarely makes a poor decision. Then, in the 90th minute, you realize she’s still running just as hard and just as fast as she was in the first. If she does get tired, she doesn’t show it.

McCaskill’s personality provides a boost to her team as well. She’s always looking to add energy to the team in any way she can. “It was awesome to go in and try and make a difference, especially going in in the second half, tied 1-1, just being able to come in and try to lift the team and do whatever I could to help us get a win,” McCaskill said after the match against France. “It was a lot of fun.”

Sometimes players use a phrase like “lift the team” to describe playing with intensity and pushing forward. McCaskill takes the idea a step further — even though she’s just 21, earning only her third USWNT cap, she could be seen clapping and yelling to pump up teammates.

It’s not clear whether McCaskill will play central midfield or another role during her pro career, but she still went No. 2 overall in the 2018 NWSL College Draft. Her talent and personality made her valuable even though there’s no set in stone role for her. And McCaskill’s college position, center forward, might be her least suitable pro position.

Something that happens a lot in American amateur soccer — and in a lot of the world, but with extreme frequency in the NCAA — is that the best player gets the No. 9 role even if they’re not as well-suited to it as they are to another position. If a team isn’t good at holding the ball and making combination plays in the attacking half against top opponents, it will often play a defensive game, play directly to its isolated star striker up top, and see if that player can singlehandedly win the game. South Carolina didn’t have to utilize this strategy too frequently, but it did against good opponents on the road and against the NCAA’s elite. The gameplan was effective — the Gamecocks had eight 1-0 wins in 2017, with McCaskill scoring or assisting the winner in six of those games.

But as effective as McCaskill was in a do-everything isolated center forward role, her shooting numbers suggested that she’d have to learn another position at the pro level. She finished her senior season with 37 percent of her shots on target, and she scored on 9 percent of her shots. Comparatively, her future Sky Blue FC teammate Imani Dorsey — who was selected No. 5 overall in the 2018 draft — put 54 percent of her shots on target and scored on 16 percent of her shots. The numbers of the top junior striker prospects who are likely to enter next year’s draft look similar to Dorsey’s: UCLA’s Hailie Mace had 48 percent of her shots on target while scoring on 16 percent of shots, and CeCe Kizer of Ole Miss put 49 of her shots on target while scoring on 23 percent of shots.

So why play McCaskill at central midfield, rather than out wide or just underneath a strike partner? “What I like about Sav is I like her feet,” USWNT head coach Jill Ellis said when asked why McCaskill is suited for the middle. “I like her willingness to run at teams. She’s done some good things in training, and giving her an opportunity to play in those No. 8 and No. 10 roles, she can come off the line, she can make runs in behind,” Ellis added, referring to McCaskill’s ability to become a threat in the penalty area from a deeper starting position than she had in college.

McCaskill is very much into this change. When asked if she likes playing in midfield, she said, “yeah, absolutely.” Instead of spending long periods of time far away from the action, McCaskill is being asked to play a new role where she’s constantly in the thick of the action, and she’s relishing it. “I love being able to be on the ball,” she said, “be able to create, being able to play both sides of the ball. So the midfield is a lot of fun for me, and just being involved in pretty much the entire game, every part of the game, is really fun.”

While the USWNT has a ton of talent in midfield, it’s spent the two years since its World Cup triumph looking for answers at the position. Sam Mewis has been excellent recently, but was unavailable for the SheBelieves Cup due to injury. Rose Lavelle has been injured for the better part of the last year. Lindsey Horan plays higher up the pitch for Portland Thorns than she does for the USWNT, and has played better for the former than she has for the latter in the last year. Morgan Brian played 90 minutes on Sunday, but looked rusty after missing most of 2017 with injuries. Carli Lloyd is still in great shape and wants to play at the next World Cup, but she’s seen her role reduced recently, and Ellis appears to be planning for the possibility that the 35-year-old two-time Ballon d’Or winner won’t still be at her best a year from now. These circumstances have all come together to give McCaskill an opportunity, but beating out one or two of those players for a World Cup place won’t be easy.

Notably, McCaskill will also be competing with Lloyd for time in NWSL, at Sky Blue FC. McCaskill was drafted by the Boston Breakers, but the team ceased operations before the start of the season, and McCaskill ended up with Sky Blue via the ensuing dispersal draft.

McCaskill doesn’t seem too bothered about the sudden change. “Whether it was in Boston or somewhere else in the country, I was just happy to be able to play professional soccer because that’s been my goal for many years,” she said. “Knowing that I was going to be able to play somewhere was a reassurance for me, wherever that ended up being.”

But because Sky Blue wasn’t planning to pick up McCaskill this offseason, its roster is not built with her in mind. McCaskill and Lloyd are joined by fellow attack-minded central midfielders Raquel Rodriguez and Daphne Corboz. Another fringe USWNT prospect, Christina Gibbons, flourished in a central role for FC Kansas City last season, but looks to be moving to fullback due to Sky Blue’s depth in the middle.

Rodriguez and Corboz were both solid in 2017, and they have existing chemistry with starting defensive midfielder Sarah Killion. McCaskill might end up playing some winger, No. 10, or even striker out of necessity. It wouldn’t be the least bit surprising if one of McCaskill, Rodriguez or Corboz was traded for a true striker or defender at some point. And since McCaskill doesn’t count against the salary cap — the league got rid of the cap hit for all former Breakers this season to encourage other teams to sign as many of them as possible — she might have the highest trade value.

Still, McCaskill is doing everything she can to get better in the middle while she’s at national team camp, before she joins up with Sky Blue. When asked what she needs to do to get better in her new role, she said it’s all about “just continuing to learn, and being around this environment, and being in training, and focusing on the little things that I can sharpen. Whether it be my movement, or vision with the ball, or thinking ahead of time.”

McCaskill’s future role isn’t obvious. She’s a college center forward, playing central midfield for the national team, and she’ll probably end up wide or as a second striker for her club team. But regardless of role, her work rate and enthusiasm are unmatched. She has the intelligence, skill and speed to go along with them. Every great team needs a versatile, hard-working energy player.

“Seeing Savannah in this environment,” Ellis said, “with her decision making, her competitiveness, we can see she’s a really competitive kid, so we’re giving her chances to see how she does in games like this.” So far, McCaskill has been up to the challenge, and she’s showing that she doesn’t need to master one particular position to be valuable to her team.