The 20-year-old central midfielder was brought in by Leicester on a season-long loan from Chelsea this summer.
Casadei’s performances so far this season have received mixed reactions from former players and the Leicester faithful.
However, Casadei’s display against Sunderland impressed Piper and he admitted that the young Italian put in a completely opposite performance on Tuesday than what he has done so far this season.
The ex-Leicester star pointed out that Casadei won the majority of his 50-50 challenges and added that the midfielder looked sharp on Tuesday while adding an extra yard to his game.
“He is a player who obviously tries to get into half spaces and get on the half turns and what we have seen in the previous games is that he was getting into those positions.
“We knew that his movement was good and his spatial awareness of where he wanted to pick the ball up and then he would take too long on the ball, he would labour, turn into trouble, or drop a shoulder and beat someone and then they would be back on him within seconds to take the ball off him” , Piper said on BBC Radio Leicester.
“He lost a lot of 50-50 challenges, I thought, throughout the start of the season.
“Tonight it was the total opposite of all that; he got into 50-50 challenges tonight and nine times out of ten he won them.
“He came away with the ball; he looked that yard we said he was lacking; he had a yard extra, I thought.
“He was getting away from the players and he looked sharp tonight.”
Casadei has so far featured ten times in the Championship for Leicester, with most of them coming from the bench.
