Deon McCauley signs contract with U.S. Soccer Team, Atlanta Silverbacks

Belize’s star striker Deon McCauley, one of only three athletes to score eleven goals during the qualifying stages of competition leading up to the approaching FIFA World Cup, has found a new home in professional soccer.  McCauley, on the heels of a recent victory with the Belmopan Bandits, as champions of the Premier League of Belize Belikin Cup, has signed with the Atlanta Silverbacks.  While the ink on the year-long contract is still drying, the announcement of the team’s newest acquisition was made today in Atlanta, Georgia.  The twenty-six-year-old is the first Belizean to sign with a professional soccer team in the United States.  McCauley has been scouted by numerous international teams since his ascent to football stardom, particularly because of his stellar record as the first player to score a hat trick in the World Cup qualifiers.  News Five spoke by phone this afternoon with Neal Malone, Director of Public Relations with the Atlanta Silverbacks.

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Via Phone: Neal Malone, PR Director, Atlanta Silverbacks

Neal Malone

“Our coaching here at the Atlanta Silverbacks had their eyes on Deon for a long time and Eric Wynalda, who is the technical director and manager for our club  and he used to play for the U.S. National Team, got a chance to see Deon play at the 2013 U.S. Gold Cup and was impressed with Deon’s abilities and Ricardo Montoya, one of our assistant coaches who is from Costa Rica, he knows Central America very well and he came across some highlights of Deon quite some time back and has kind of kept an eye on Deon, you know, his situation and his developing career.  They were very, very convinced that Deon was somebody that looked like he could really help the Silverbacks or the team and they wanted to put everything in their power to go after him and try to sign him for the upcoming season.”

Isani Cayetano

“Can you divulge a bit of information with regards to the contract that he has signed, the length of the contract and the dollar amount if possible?”

Deon McCauley

Via Phone: Neal Malone

“I can’t divulge any of the financial information but I can tell you that Deon will be with us for at least the entire 2014 season here in the U.S., here in the North American Soccer League.  We play a split season schedule kind of similar to how you see it in a lot of the Central American countries where you play a spring season and a fall season…  And so we’ve secured Deon for at least 2014 and we hope that this season can be sort of a start of something special for him here in Atlanta.”

Isani Cayetano

“I understand that he begins training with the team on Saturday.  Can you give us an idea whether or not the transition for someone such as Deon McCauley, coming from a semi-professional background and becoming a part of a professional league, will be a rather difficult one or something that he can fairly handle over time?”

Via Phone: Neal Malone

“Well I think, you know, between his experience with the national team and his experience playing with a variety of different clubs in Belize and in Honduras, in one case, you know, I think the coaches are very confident that Deon can come in and adopt well.  It’s one of the main reasons why they scouted him because they thought that his game fits in well with how the Silverbacks wanted to play.”