Christopher Martin Casper (born 28 April 1975) is an English football manager and former player who is now the director of football at

League Two The English Football League Two (often referred to as League Two for short or Sky Bet League Two for sponsorship purposes, and known as the Football League Two from 2004 until 2016) is the third and lowest division of the English Football Lea ...

side Salford City. As a player he was a defender who played in the

Premier League The Premier League (legal name: The Football Association Premier League Limited) is the highest level of the men's English football league system. Contested by 20 clubs, it operates on a system of promotion and relegation with the English Fo ...

for Manchester United and in

the Football League The English Football League (EFL) is a league of professional association football, football clubs from England and Wales. Founded in 1888 as the Football League, the league is the oldest such competition in Association football around the wor ...

for AFC Bournemouth,

Swindon Town Swindon Town Football Club is a professional football club based in Swindon, Wiltshire, England. The team currently competes in , the fourth tier of the English football league system. The club has played home matches at the County Ground sin ...

and

Reading Reading is the process of taking in the sense or meaning of letters, symbols, etc., especially by sight or touch. For educators and researchers, reading is a multifaceted process involving such areas as word recognition, orthography (spelling ...

. An injury forced him to retire from playing in 2000 at the age of 24. Casper proceeded into management and took charge of Team Bath in 2002 before moving to

Football League Two The English Football League Two (often referred to as League Two for short or Sky Bet League Two for sponsorship purposes, and known as the Football League Two from 2004 until 2016) is the third and lowest division of the English Football Lea ...

club Bury for three years. At the time, he was the youngest manager in the top four tiers of the English football league system. However, a run of poor form in 2008 led to his departure from Bury. Casper then took backroom jobs at

Bradford City Bradford City Association Football Club is an English professional football club in Bradford, West Yorkshire. The team competes in League Two, the fourth tier of the English football league system and are currently managed by Mark Hughes. ...

and

Grimsby Town Grimsby Town Football Club is a professional football club based in Cleethorpes, North East Lincolnshire, England, that in the 2022–23 season will compete in , the fourth tier of the English football league system, following the victory in t ...

, before joining the

as a club support manager.

Early life

Casper was born in

Burnley Burnley () is a town and the administrative centre of the wider Borough of Burnley in Lancashire, England, with a 2001 population of 73,021. It is north of Manchester and east of Preston, Lancashire, Preston, at the confluence of the River C ...

, Lancashire, and attended the town's

St Theodore's RC High School Blessed Trinity Roman Catholic College is a coeducational Roman Catholic secondary school located in Burnley, Lancashire, England. History The school opened in 2006 as part of ambitious plan to replace all of the district's 11 to 16 schools, fun ...

. He is the son of former

forward and manager Frank Casper.

Playing career

Manchester United

Casper joined Manchester United as a trainee in 1991 and played in their FA Youth Cup winning team a year later. When still only 17, he signed professional terms in January 1993, making his United debut in the

League Cup In several sports, most prominently association football, a league cup or secondary cup generally signifies a cup competition for which entry is restricted only to teams in a particular league. The first national association football tournament t ...

game against Port Vale at Old Trafford on 5 October 1994. Casper was a product of the same United youth setup that sparked the highly successful careers of players such as David Beckham,

Paul Scholes Paul Scholes (born 16 November 1974) is an English football coach, pundit, former player, and co-owner of Salford City. He spent his entire professional playing career with Manchester United, for whom he scored over 150 goals in more than 700 ...

Gary Neville Gary Alexander Neville (born 18 February 1975) is an English football pundit and former player. He is also a co-owner of English Football League club Salford City. After retiring from football in 2011, Neville went into punditry and was a comm ...

Phil Neville Philip John Neville (born 21 January 1977) is an English football manager and former player, who is the head coach of MLS team Inter Miami CF. He is also the co-owner of Salford City, along with several of his former Manchester United teamma ...

and

Nicky Butt Nicholas Butt (born 21 January 1975) is an English football coach and former player who was most recently the head of first-team development at Manchester United. He is also a co-owner and chief executive officer of Salford City. He played prof ...

, who all spent a decade or more with the club, helping them win numerous trophies and also being regular members of the

England national football team The England national football team has represented England in international football since the first international match in 1872. It is controlled by The Football Association (FA), the governing body for football in England, which is affilia ...

. Casper served as captain of the England youth team, and was a member of the

UEFA European Under-18 Championship The UEFA European Under-19 Championship, or simply UEFA Under-19 Championship or the UEFA Euro U-19, is an annual football competition contested by the European men's under-19 national teams of the member associations of UEFA. Spain and England ...

winning side in 1993. He also appeared for the England under-21 side in the

Toulon Tournament The Toulon Tournament (officially the Festival International "Espoirs" – Tournoi Maurice Revello) is a football (training match) tournament, which traditionally features invited national teams composed of youth players from U-17 to U-23 level. ...

against

Malaysia Malaysia ( ; ) is a country in Southeast Asia. The federation, federal constitutional monarchy consists of States and federal territories of Malaysia, thirteen states and three federal territories, separated by the South China Sea into two r ...

in June 1995. Casper later had several spells on loan at AFC Bournemouth and

during the 1990s, but was unable to claim a regular place in the first team at Old Trafford and he was sold to Division Two side

in November 1998 for £300,000.

Reading

He was playing for Reading against Cardiff City in a Division Two fixture on Boxing Day 1999 when he suffered a double leg fracture. This was the last professional game that Casper, then aged 24, ever played, as he later announced his retirement the following year after failing to recover sufficiently from the injury. More than four years later, he secured undisclosed compensation in an out-of-court settlement with Richard Carpenter, the Cardiff City player whose tackle had caused his career-ending injury. By this stage, Casper was a youth team coach at Bury.

Managerial and coaching career

Team Bath

While undergoing rehabilitation at the

University of Bath (Virgil, Georgics II) , mottoeng = Learn the culture proper to each after its kind , established = 1886 (Merchant Venturers Technical College) 1960 (Bristol College of Science and Technology) 1966 (Bath University of Technology) 1971 (univ ...

, he coached Team Bath along with Paul Tisdale, and it was that side that reached the first round of the

FA Cup The Football Association Challenge Cup, more commonly known as the FA Cup, is an annual knockout football competition in men's domestic English football. First played during the 1871–72 season, it is the oldest national football competi ...

in 2002–03.

Bury

He left to join Bury as youth coach before taking charge of the reserves in the 2004–05 season. At the beginning of the 2005–06 season, with six defeats from the first nine games, he replaced

Graham Barrow Graham Barrow (born 13 June 1954) is an English former footballer who has since become a professional manager in the English game. He is currently working for Exeter City as a Tactical Insights Coach for former Wigan Athletic manager Gary Cald ...

as manager. Casper offered to resign in 2006 when Bury were thrown out of the FA Cup in the 2006–07 season for fielding an ineligible player, but this was rejected by the club's board. After a run of poor results he was fired in January 2008.

Bradford City

Five months later, he was appointed youth team coach at fellow League Two side

, taking over from Jon Pepper.

Grimsby Town

On 1 December 2009, Casper was appointed assistant manager to

Neil Woods Neil Stephen Woods (born 30 July 1966) is an English football manager and former professional footballer who is academy manager at Grimsby Town. As a player, he was a striker from 1983 to 2000 for Doncaster Rovers, Rangers, Ipswich Town, Bra ...

, replacing Brian Stein. Town suffered relegation from the Football League and Casper stepped down as assistant manager at the end of the season.

FA Premier League

On 30 June 2010, Casper joined the

as a club support manager working within the academy system. The role sees him working with the eight top-flight clubs in the north west to help them implement educational programmes and work with their academies.

Managerial statisticss

Honours

Manchester United * FA Charity Shield:

1994 File:1994 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The 1994 Winter Olympics are held in Lillehammer, Norway; The Kaiser Permanente building after the 1994 Northridge earthquake; A model of the MS Estonia, which sank in the Baltic Sea; Nelson ...

England U18 *

1993 File:1993 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The Oslo I Accord is signed in an attempt to resolve the Israeli–Palestinian conflict; The Russian White House is shelled during the 1993 Russian constitutional crisis; Czechoslovakia is peacefu ...

References

External links

* *
England FA profile
{{DEFAULTSORT:Casper, Chris 1975 births Footballers from Burnley Living people Association football defenders English footballers English football managers Manchester United F.C. players AFC Bournemouth players Swindon Town F.C. players Reading F.C. players Premier League players English Football League players Bury F.C. managers Bradford City A.F.C. non-playing staff Grimsby Town F.C. non-playing staff Salford City F.C. non-playing staff